A Ride On The Trojan Horse

is the first novel in the Anadarko Grace series, featuring a three-generation team of private detectives operating in and around Santa Cruz, CA. Available now in Quality Paperback (ISBN 1-58500-087-6) from 1st Books Library, or at your local bookstore by special order from Ingram Books distributor.

Private Investigator TJ Billings might have an enemy or two -- who hasn't? But he's damned if he believes he's pissed somebody off sufficiently to want him dead. So when he becomes the victim of a sniper attack on a lonely stretch of Highway 1 in the pre-dawn darkness, and manages to reach a bed and breakfast inn near the village of Troon before losing consciousness, he decides it might be a good idea to lie low until he can find out who has been using him for target practice. While recuperating in the relative safety of the inn, TJ calls on daughter Elizabeth and his Uncle Beau to check out a partial license plate from a car that had tailed him earlier on the night of the shooting. But while he's being attended to by the inn's owner, Willa Kelley, it's the sniper who turns up murdered, in the form of local handyman and would-be rapist, Murdock Jones -- a man TJ's never heard of. Elizabeth's investigation leads her to the Evergreen Institute, an environmental organization run by Jeremy Boal, whose charter is to save the Ancient Forests by proving that paperless commerce is feasible with current technology. Meanwhile, Uncle Beau follows up a possible link to Orlando Cruz, wealthy Santa Cruz restaurateur with a restless young wife and questionable ties to the local underworld. As Deputy Sheriff Justin Highstreet tries to sort out the truth in Troon, with the unwelcome help of victim-cum-suspect TJ Billings, the lines of inquiry pursued by Elizabeth and Uncle Beau turn up bizarre connections to the murdered man: a conspiracy to sabotage the Institute's computer system; an old unsolved missing persons case of TJ's; and a love triangle that culminates with Uncle Beau in the gunsights of a murderous husband.