Atomic Night: A Chad Kidd Desert Thriller

...Terrific thriller...Atmospheric...Compelling and Memorable Characters... IndieReader, March, 2019.A sprawling desert noir setting and hard-boiled cast features tequila connoisseur and Kawasaki-riding Chad Kidd, who investigates the killing of a friend's daughter and ex-wife."The drugs were too strong, the supervision too loose, the parents too selfish and out of it, and the kids too young. The social media too toxic..."Four years ago, firefighters found Chloe Nelson burned in a wheelbarrow in front of her tony home above Palm Springs, with two more charred and shot bodies inside the ruins. But the case went cold. Chloe was the 17 y.o. daughter of a retired Palm Springs P.D. police lieutenant named Phil Nelson.The initial suspects were Chloe's estranged boyfriend Jay Strait and his friend Laird Bledsoe, two members of a dangerous clique of narcotics and party loving Coachella Valley teenagers. But the case has languished, partly because Bledsoe, the star high school quarterback, went on to become an Iraq war hero.Chloe's best friend, the funky big-canvas artist Lizzy Grant, has rekindled interest in the murders with a hard-hitting Facebook campaign that indicts Jay Strait in the acid court of social media.Chad Kidd, who bombs around the desert on a Kawasaki KLR650 and sips Milagro Silver to blow off steam, decides to take on the case to help his old police pal Phil. The cast includes Lana Daniels, a Hollywood starlet turned real estate agent who has the hots for Kidd and suspiciously buys up dry desert plots all over Palm Springs. She's Jay Strait's mom, too.Did Strait kill Chloe in a fit of jealous rage, because she passed him over for the handsome ne'er do well Travis Kincaid, who Lizzy calls "Cary Grant on acid"? Was Chloe pregnant at the time of her death, making it a quadruple murder? Kidd finds the case not so cut-and-dried when a Chechen thug named Yamdar leaves Lizzy threatening messages.