Hard Exit
by Bruce Leonard
read by Michael Kirby
Part 1 of the Jack Drake Private-Eye Mysteries series
Jack Drake shares a Malibu beach mansion with a gorgeous movie star but hates his life. The depressed private eye can't shake the death of his wife and can't end his toxic relationship with Hollywood heartthrob Amanda Bigelow.
But an at-risk sixteen-year-old who is injured in an inner-city shooting gets Jack unstuck. As a favor to a friend, Jack sequesters Game in the mansion, keeping him safe.
Their worldviews differ, but they draw from their histories of loss and grief while investigating the shooting and three seemingly unrelated murders, tying Game's world in downtrodden Oakville to Jack's in idyllic Malibu.
Fans of wisecracking investigators such as Spenser, Kinsey Milhone, and Stephanie Plum will cheer for Jack Drake, a man in love with two women-one of them dead.