Joyride to Hellhole

By Robert Solem

Gus Engstrom is a retired cop from a small town in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. He has moved to the modest adult-only community of Tucson Estates in Tucson Arizona, in part to live closer, but not too close, to his younger brother Jason who is a senior FBI agent in Phoenix, and in part to heal from the senseless death of his beloved Sheila, killed by a drunk driver. Within months, Jason enlists him for an undercover operation involving Medicare fraud. As cover at Jason's insistence, and in spite of his natural cop antipathy toward private investigators, Gus establishes the PI firm of Engstrom and Associates. The associates are three free-spirited retirees, Harley riders all, with whom he had developed a close bond. His closest friend among the three is Jerry Hunter, a former Special Forces Marine, who brings his unique skill set to the team. In the course of that first assignment, as told in Shady Acres, the fledgling PI firm develops a life of its own. The assignment completed, the team disperses for a summer away from the Tucson oven, but agrees to revisit continuing the firm in the fall. Gus takes Rose Thomas, his new significant other of just a few months, on a summer of exploring and sailing the waters of his Pacific Northwest, a magical summer that cements their relationship. This second novel, Joyride to Hellhole, begins the following September with the return of Gus and Rose to Tucson. They arrive back only to receive a call from Rose's much younger half-sister. She has been arrested for allegedly dealing cocaine. Lisa Thomas, the sister, is a street-smart good time girl with stunning looks, a weakness for alcohol, and a genius for attracting Mr. Wrong. Her latest mistake was a country rock singer named Ronnie Stark whose side business is dealing narcotics. He became physically abusive when she refused to be his mule. Now, she wants him gone from her life. As leverage, she steals a flash drive, thinking it contains compromising files concerning his narcotics business. Soon after, she finds herself dragged in handcuffs to the downtown station and subjected to a brutal interrogation before being incarcerated in the Pima County Detention Center. The mastermind behind the frame is actually one Carl Clanton, the older half-brother of Ronnie and boss of a criminal organization with tentacles throughout Arizona. Her less than brilliant ex-lover Ronnie had himself secretly copied these incriminating files from Carl's computer onto a flash drive thinking they might be useful to him at some point. When Lisa in turn pilfers the drive from Ronnie, he confesses his transgression to Carl. If Carl were to learn of the theft after the fact, Ronnie fears it would merit him a death sentence for sure. Carl will go to any lengths to force Lisa to return the flash drive. In his corner are a bent cop and a malicious prison guard, both on his payroll, a public defender who owes him bigtime, a screwy judge, a powerful figure in the background who Carl refers to as his Protector, and other assorted thugs and low-life. In her corner Lisa has some powerful allies of her own, the close knit team of the four PI's of Gus Engstrom and Associates, Gus' FBI brother who specializes in RICO investigations, Rocky Maestras, founder and CEO of the foremost private investigative agency in Arizona, Llewellyn Theodore ("Teddy") Miller, a retired legal superstar, and her half-sister Rose. However, Lisa is reluctant to involve them fearing that they could become collateral damage. They undertake to expose the frame and prove her innocence while she endeavors to elude the clutches of the treacherous Carl.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1506111475
• ISBN13: 9781506111476
• Release Date: February 2015
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"