Dancing Blind

In this literary departure from a detective-procedural novel, a former police officer finds no sanctuary from risk and moral uncertainty after he shoots a Hispanic teen under questionable circumstances. He is pulled out of the bureaucratic shell he has been hiding in ever since as he attempts to solve the unexplained death of a populist television reporter he admires. In the process, he is forced to confront his past, his values, his ethics, and the escapist life he has created for himself by his immersion in art appreciation. As the story unfolds, the investigator also meets and attempts to rekindle a romance with a painter he dated in college. Their encounters compel him to examine his failing marriage, and her to confront the loss of her marijuana-smuggling husband, and her stunted art, which has become frozen in grief. Meanwhile, the husband of the dead reporter, a state assemblyman, finds himself becoming both a victim and a suspect of political expediency as questions about his involvement in her death increase. The story crosses northern California, from the back streets of San Jose, to the halls of power in Sacramento, to a sleepy fishing village on the north coast. Any reader who has ever faced an ethical dilemma, or striven to find a balance between an artistic and a conventional life, the internal and the external world, will find much to enjoy in this darkly whimsical collage of love, art, politics and betrayal.