I am delighted to announce that my first novel The Haight will be published next month and is now available for pre-order.

Those of you who have got to know us over the past few years know that Carol and I suffer from a rather dismal addiction – writing books. We’ve both published a few and this is my first novel, a murder mystery set in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in 1968. I call it a whodunnit with hippies.

In early June 1968, the Summer of Love was long past and heroin was becoming the drug of choice on Haight-Ashbury. When a young artist called John Blakely died, his friends thought he’d over-dosed, but the autopsy showed his heroin had been cut with silver cyanide.

When Lieutenant Jimmy Spracklin learned of the murder, he took the case himself. As the head of the SFPD’s Bureau of Inspectors, Spracklin could have handed it off. But he was drawn to Haight-Ashbury. A year earlier, his 16-year-old step-daughter Marie had run away to the Haight. He’d searched for her every spare moment and investigating the Blakely murder would allow him to devote more time to the search for his missing child. 

The Haight is the story of the investigation into Blakely’s death, and Spracklin’s search for his beloved Marie. The response to the book so far has been great. I’m thrilled with the pre-sales my publisher Roger Williams has generated in the San Francisco area.

Interested? Want to know more? Then follow my author’s page on Facebook by clicking here. I’m going to be blogging through the summer. If you’re interested in the era, the story, classic rock and crime fiction, you’ll find something to interest you. Better still, you can order the book on Amazon here. You’ll probably receive the book in July – just in time to take it to the beach.