One Wild Ride

Phil Paget, 33, deeply in debt, is a has-been screenwriter. Herman Weintraub, a producer Phil has worked for in the past, invites him to lunch. Herman wants Phil to locate his missing brother-in-law, the Controller of Weintraub Productions, who has stolen forty million dollars from the firm. Phil tries to tell Herman that he’s not a detective but Herman shrugs him off saying he’s the only person he can trust and that he’s written detective sceenplays so what’s the difference? Armed with scanty iinformation and a handsome cash advance Phil sets out in his new role and is promptly drugged in an old Hollywood home waking up at a party in downtown L.A. where he meets an alluring actress, Gillian Dexter. When Phil tries to find Herman to get some answers as to why people are suddenly trying to kill him he’s told the producer has left for the French Riviera. Phil is left alone to fight off an assortment of jackals who are all after the missing forty million: a menacing scarfaced killer and his henchmen; the members of a private ‘Association’, which does C.I.A.-type work; and a drug lord who hides behind a respectable daytime profession. Phil is framed for murder. His frantic run for his life takes him to the Riverside Valley, Catalina Island, the Bahamas and finally a ghastly confrontation in a Topanga Canyon home which leads to murder and mayhem. And just when solutions provide resolutions an unexpected surprise ending proves that sometimes solutions merely lead to other solutions in this wildly suspenseful and comic novel.