This fast-paced Noir page turner will satisfy readers dying to see strong modern women smart and tough enough to get the best of both Nazis and their own pet hardboiled detective, all in the milieu of San Francisco and the Bay Area in the late 1930’s.
In this, the first in the series, Frisco waterfront detective Phil D’Bourbon meets a rich new client with a wad of money who’s in a lot of trouble. 60 minutes later she turns up dead in his ’35 Plymouth.
According to his pal Shultz from Homicide, the hardboiled detective is a suspect until proven otherwise. At first, Phil’s girlfriend Lily – the owner of a Chinatown Night Club – seems nothing more than a “deliciously wrapped chocolate”. Lily is, however, anything but trivial.
Set against the pre-war American back drop of loud and ubiquitous Nazi propaganda and free circulation of fascist ideas, the detective is unwittingly thrust into a hidden world of German and Japanese espionage, and murder.
Sally – his mysterious client and formidable “army brat” – becomes his ally in a no holds barred fight against the Nazi spies and moles who killed her father and sister. Or is she?
Together they find allies among the old Wobblies and socialist egg ranchers populating the countryside around Petaluma and Pt. Reyes, the shrimp fishermen of China Camp, and Italians of North Beach. Luckily Morris Shultz believes their incredible story.
As the Germans and Japanese pursue Phil and Sally, the tables are turned. Surprised spies find themselves being hunted and killed while Americans – official and otherwise- sleepwalk.
Can the pair “running wild” – shooting up small towns with a piper cub and a tommy gun -stop the Nazis before they get their stolen secrets out of the country? Can Sally and Phil convince the Army and FBI that they are the good guys, despite a trail of explosions and dead Germans who had diplomatic immunity? Where does Lily fit into all this?
A fancy Packard is waiting. Fog horns are moaning. Cathedral Bells are chiming. The cannery gals are sharpening their knives down on the docks. Odd radio signals are coming from a cottage up on the hill. Read on and find out!
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