The Plunge - Paperback

L.A. private eye Joe Knox aims for hard-boiled but has found safety in being sunny-side-up. He and his business-savvy rookie partner, Leah Levin, plunge into the 1980s world of corrupt, small-town politics, Savings & Loan failures, meth labs, Hells Angels, conspiracy and murder in a Mojave Desert town. They trace a teen runaway, who's hooked up with stuntman-turned-enforcer Reggie Thomas and drug-dealer I.Q. Sonneborn. Thomas and Sonneborn want to make movies. To reach that dream, they accept a deal blindly to earn a life-changing sum by cooking 100 pounds of meth. It tests their partnership when a large-scale conspiracy begins to unravel. Paleytown is ruled by Clint Paley. When he suddenly dies, his grave is robbed of the body and weirdly held for ransom. Paley's death creates an implosion of deadly agendas and interests between citizen groups and Paley's son and daughter, who are left to guard his legacy. But when the runaway turns up dead in the resort's signature attraction-a man-made lake called The Plunge-the private eyes and the drug cooks find themselves on the same side to find her killer and to end the saga of Paley family corruption.