THE OCEAN FOREST - MURDER IN MYRTLE BEACH

Frankie McKeller hates the beach. He has ever since that day on the one they called Omaha. If the guy who saved his life during the war wasn’t getting married he’d never have made the trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

As a low budget gum shoe out of Baltimore, he isn’t prepared for a weekend of hobnobbing with the Southern elite. When a prominent wedding guest is found with a bullet to the brain, the six week course he took in private investigation proves lacking as well.

Who knew life on the Grand Strand could be so grand? In three days at the beach he is seduced by a sultry debutante who used to be engaged to his buddy, threatened by a controlling father and roughed up by a mysterious henchman running muscle for the rich and privileged. Frankie is out of his element at the exclusive Ocean Forest Hotel, snooping and stumbling his way through his first ever murder case. The deeper he wades into the mystery the more things keep pointing back to his best friend and he is forced to come face to face with his own ghosts and demons.

Crooked land deals, secret alliances and forgotten family skeletons cloud the truth in the land of sun, surf, golf and gators. Set in a budding beach resort, still searching for an identity, he finds that nothing is as it seems and his experience with following cheating husbands and wives offers little in the way of aid. He’s looking for answers to questions some people don’t want answered and his blend of jaded sarcasm with blunt Yankee machismo is leaving a lot of ruffled feathers in his wake.

 Torn between seeking the truth and protecting his friend, Frankie slowly begins to uncover clues as he’s dragged deeper into an under tow of deceit and corruption. Southern tradition meets old school mystery in this twisting tale as rival families attempt to alter the course of what is destined to become one of America’s top vacation destinations.

DAMN YANKEE

As the newly hired House Dick at the exclusive Ocean Forest Hotel, Frankie McKeller is riding the gravy train all the way to the bank. The former gumshoe never had it so easy. That is until Eleanor Highsmith strolls into his life and convinces him to find her missing teenage daughter.

If that weren't enough, when the body of young black girl is found raped and murdered on the beach, he is persuaded by a beautiful barmaid to lend his less than stellar detective skills to finding the killer. Before he knows it, Frankie is in over his head with the fates of a young girl and a wrongly accused man resting on his shoulders.

Bootleg liquor, illegal gambling and teenage prostitution aren't advertised in the tourist brochures but Frankie will have to wade through the seedy side of Myrtle Beach if he's going to get the answers he's looking for. Standing in his way are a couple of cut throat moonshine runners, a stern sheriff with family ties to the dark side of the beach and a Good Ole Boy system that doesn't take kindly to damn yankees who come down south and make waves.

The waters of truth are murky and Frankie is caught in another undertow of deceit and corruption in this sequel to The Ocean Forest. A taboo love affair that can never be, the mysterious past of a murdered care giver and the fight to rescue two innocents before they are pulled into a life of exploitation and despair weigh heavy as he struggles to solve the crime and save the day.