This week, Susie Black’s Saturday Author Spotlight shines on mystery/thriller author Topper Jones.
About the Author: Christopher G. Jones, Ph.D., writes under the pseudonym Topper Jones for his detective novels featuring surfing crime-fighter Thaddeus Hanlon and his sassy partner Bri de la Guerra. Before devoting himself full-time to writing, Jones worked in public accounting and consulting and as a university professor teaching financial reporting, software development, and business communication. He is the co-author of four textbooks and over fifty professional journal articles. Other publishing credits include general interest newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, creative non-fiction, and children’s fiction.
Jones is a member of the Write On! St. George chapter of the League of Utah Writers, the International Thriller Writers, and an affiliate member of the Mystery Writers of America. To be close to his family, he makes his home in the southwestern desert rather than his native California, but every chance he gets, he treks the 450 miles to the Pacific Coast to get in a little “water therapy” and catch a few waves.
Oceano Beach Bedlam is the second book in the Thad Hanlon/Bri de la Guerra Mystery Series. Here is a blurb to whet your appetite:
Hanlon & de la Guerra have gone full service. Thad Hanlon and his martial-arts-obsessed partner, Bri de la Guerra, hang out their shingle as newly licensed private investigators. Now, in addition to fraud-busting, the two detectives do it all. Background checks. Surveillance. Even finding lost souls. Just about anything that requires sleuthing or going undercover.
All they need is a client.
That’s when a former exotic dancer from Bakersfield, California, shows up looking for her surf prodigy son, who’s gone missing in the wake of cult violence terrorizing the California Central Coast.
Here is Susie’s review:
Maybe if Central California coast-based Private Investigator partners Hanlon & de la Guerra remembered the admonishment of being careful what you wish for before accepting an ex-pole dancer searching for her missing surf champion teenage son as a client, life as the two gumshoes knew it would not have exploded.
Part thriller, part mystery, part redemption, part paranormal, and a second chance at life and love, Oceano Beach Bedlam, the second book in Topper Jones’ PI Thad Hanlon Surfing Detective Series, is a whiplash of a rollercoaster ride through a fast-paced, intricate plot. The cast of imperfect but believable characters drives the story that grabs readers by the throat from page one and never lets go.
With more twists and turns than a pretzel and enough red herrings to keep readers guessing who the good guys and bad guys are, Topper Jones has penned a Jim Dandy of a tale. The story is spiced with snappy, snarky dialogue, an irreverent but damaged protagonist, and features an adorable toddler who steals the show. In this parable of good versus evil, Jones has woven an amusing yet gripping plot that unflinchingly bares open the underbelly of the surf culture in a beach-themed mystery thriller culminating with a blockbuster ending that is sure to take a reader’s breath away.
https://www.amazon.com/Oceano-Bedlam-Hanlon-Guerra-Mystery-ebook
