No Good Deed

Malibu tries hard to live up to its reputation for isolation. But it can’t escape where it is—on the front line in the battle between private property rights and saving land for the public good. This glittering seaside community is what dreams are made of, but beneath the bright exterior is a dark underside. Everybody feels it, some people are drawn to it, so when a thirteen-year-old boy goes missing under suspicious circumstances and a barking dog leads deputies to a battered body on a popular hiking trail, Malibu Times reporter Brody Cooper fears evil rearing its sinister head. Out to get the story, he stumbles onto a trail of greed and environmental double-dealing that leads him face to face with an impulsive killer—and his own demons.

A rollicking debut that follows a curious and passionate protagonist on his eccentric small-town crime beat.