Excerpt from The Marauders by Tom Cooper, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Awkwardly, Lindquist reached his left arm across his lap and opened the door.

"You okay, Lindquist?" Villanova asked.

Lindquist stooped and looked into the car. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah. Favor? No crusades just yet."

Lindquist nodded.

"Got your keys?"

"Yeah."

"Check for me."

Lindquist took his keys out of his jeans pocket, jangled them, gave Villanova a thumbs-up.

"Still know how to use them?"

"So long, Villanova," Lindquist said. He shut the door and stepped aside as Villanova turned the car around. He watched the taillights jitter like fireflies down the driveway, one pair and then two and then one again when he squinted an eye.

Lindquist opened the front door, flicked on the light, sniffed. A sweet-sour stink, of rancid bacon grease and chicken fat, wafted from the kitchen. And the den was littered with grease-mottled takeout bags, empty beer cans, month-old newspapers still in their cellophane bags. Lindquist wondered what his daughter, Reagan, would think if she dropped by for a visit, what his wife would think if she came back.

Like that was going to happen.

He moved to pick up one of the bags but his arm wasn't there. He went to the kitchen and got an Abita out of the refrigerator and then he sat at the cluttered dining room table. Bills, all months overdue. Mortgage, credit cards, diesel, insurance. And books stacked four and five high: The Story of the American Merchant Marine. The Pirates Lafitte. The Journal of Jean Lafitte. The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans. Biogeochemistry of the Wetlands: Science and Applications.

Among the books were time-yellowed maritime maps as stiff as parchment, marked with red felt-tip pen in Lindquist's hieroglyphic hand. A metal detector lay across the table with its circuitry box open and its wiring sticking out. Gwen used to bitch when he left these things on the table, but now he could keep them where he goddamn well pleased.

Lindquist leaned on one ass cheek and took out a Pez dispenser from his pants pocket and flicked the head. Donald Duck spat out an oblong white pill: Oxycontin, whittled by Lindquist with a pocketknife so it fit perfectly into the dispenser. With the bottom of his Abita bottle he pummeled the pill on the dining room table until it was crushed to dust. Then he plugged a nostril with his forefinger and leaned over and snorted the powder, tipping his head back and rubbing the dust off his upper lip.

Lindquist unfolded one of the maps over the table, a fraying map in hachured black and blue ink of the Barataria, its serpentine waterways and archipelagos of barrier islands. Over time Lindquist had made his own adjustments to the cartography, crossed out cheniers succumbed to time and tempest, drawn new islands and hummocks sprung up overnight. One was shaped like a tadpole, another like a paw track, another like an Egyptian udjat. Over some of the islands he'd drawn X's, over others question marks.

He uncapped a purple felt-tip pen with his teeth, studying the map, marking over one of the islands. He reached for his beer, but his right arm still wasn't there. He dropped the pen and clutched the bottle, thinking of the last thing Gwen had told him before she left.

You're in a bad place, she'd said. You need help.

Lindquist finished his beer, went to the refrigerator and got another, sat back down at the dining room table and opened his laptop. In Google he typed Jean Lafitte and pulled up more than a million results. Then he typed in Lafitte and Barataria and got nearly two hundred and fifty. He typed in the words treasure and gold and pirate and then he typed in other search terms until he stumbled upon a treasure-hunting board where men—only men—had posted their metal detecting stories. One of the posts showed pictures of brass mushroom buttons and musket balls and doubloons, another a War of 1812 artillery button, another yet an 1851 Officer's Eagle Sword belt plate.

Excerpted from The Marauders by Tom Cooper. Copyright © 2015 by Tom Cooper. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.