A bizarre death, a string of murders, and a city on the brink of mob war. A resourceful but untested private eye seeks the key to them all. Can he survive long enough to find it? 

It was just a photograph in the newspaper. In the half-light of dawn, a young woman's body dangled from the top of a conveyor belt above a huge mound of gravel, her arm caught like the stem of an autumn leaf reluctant to fall … But it was the yearbook portrait beside it that caught my eye… It was the same girl, and I recognized her.  She was the punk poet from Curtiz’s university office.

—from A Hard Darkness

When private investigator Nash Tobin takes a job for the famous writer Preston Curtiz, it appears at first to be a blackmail case. Then the body of Curtiz’s exotic but troubled student Rudi Alsmith is found hanging from a conveyor belt at a local gravel yard. As Tobin delves into Rudi’s death, he uncovers the bleak world she lived in, a subculture full of drugs and sex but devoid of hope.  Other killings follow and Tobin himself becomes a suspect.  Fired by his client and hunted by cops and thugs alike, Tobin must unravel the tangled mystery of A Hard Darkness fast. It will be his only chance to save himself and find justice for a tragically lost soul. 

Awards:

FINALIST: 2025 Next Generation Indie Book Awards (First Novel) 

A Hard Darkness is available from Amazon.com in a variety of formats.