What happens when a man changes his name, changes his face, leaves his old life behind and gets the chance to start over?
For James Alfred Zachary, the answer should have been simple: become someone new.
But in Dutch Haid’s The Bitch Farm and its follow-up, The Deed, escaping a past is much harder when the most dangerous parts of that past are still living inside you.
That is exactly what makes these two connected thrillers so unsettling.
James Zachary Was Already Living More Than One Life
In The Bitch Farm, James appears to be a successful businessman connected to the Time Everlasting Cemetery in Florida. To the outside world, he can look respectable, controlled and ordinary.
Inside his mind, however, things are very different.
James is accompanied by other personalities, including Jessie and Zac. Jessie represents a more romantic and social side, while Zac emerges as the violent protector who reacts when James feels rejected, humiliated or betrayed. The deeper the story goes, the more these identities complicate both James’s behavior and the investigation surrounding him.
Meanwhile, FBI Special Agents Brad Ashley and Jack Baird, along with Detective Sue Gunther, begin piecing together a series of murders and disappearances. Their suspicions increasingly point toward James, but suspicion alone is not enough.
They need proof.
And James remains frustratingly difficult to connect to the crimes.
Then James Gets the Perfect Escape
By the end of The Bitch Farm, the pressure is building.
James sells the cemetery business, disappears from the area and undergoes plastic surgery. The man law enforcement has been watching is suddenly almost impossible to recognize.
Then comes the biggest change of all.
James Alfred Zachary becomes Hershel Liam Daquin.
With counterfeit documents, a new appearance, a different location and a fresh identity, Hershel has the opportunity to live an entirely different life. He even tries to convince himself that this new beginning can work. He wants companionship, normal relationships and fewer of the destructive patterns that followed James.
For a moment, it almost feels possible.
Almost.
A New Face Cannot Silence Zac
The problem is that changing the outside does not erase what is happening inside.
Jessie and Zac remain part of Hershel’s psychological world. Hershel may hope that Zac will stay hidden, but the old triggers are still there. Rejection, dishonesty, betrayal and anger can bring the darker personality back to the surface.
That conflict becomes central to The Deed.
Soon, violent crimes begin appearing in Louisiana and investigators notice disturbing similarities to the cases they were following in Florida. The task force now has to consider a frightening possibility: their killer may have escaped, reinvented himself and started again somewhere else.
Can Anyone Truly Reinvent Themselves?
That question gives Dutch Haid’s two thrillers much of their psychological weight.
The Bitch Farm asks readers to watch a dangerous identity take shape. The Deed asks what happens when that same man tries to bury his past beneath a new face and a new name.
The result is a dark, expanding cat-and-mouse story about identity, deception, murder and the terrifying possibility that reinvention may only change what other people see.
If you enjoy serial-killer fiction, psychological suspense, law-enforcement investigations and villains who keep changing the rules, these two books offer a connected thriller journey worth following.
The Bitch Farm is available now on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB6JKX3W
Author Central:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0DJHFKCD4
The Deed is currently in the publishing phase and will be available soon.