Ballast Point Breakdown: A Rolly Waters Mystery - Softcover

Fayman, Corey Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 099919898X ISBN 13: 9780999198988

Publisher: Konstellation Press, 2020

Synopsis

2021 San Diego Book Awards winner!

Trained dolphins drown a Navy diver. An animal-rights activist commits public suicide. Can guitar-playing detective Rolly Waters unearth one family's secrets before others die?

On a cool winter evening, a speedboat hurtles across San Diego Bay and crashes into the Admiral's Club where a farewell party for the Navy's top-secret Dolphin Divers program is underway. As guests flee the ensuing fire, a woman named Janis Withers crawls from the inferno and screams her last words - Arion has returned!

Guitar-playing private detective Rolly Waters finds himself pulled into the case when he connects Janis to a pair of dog tags left behind by Butch Fleetwood, a member of the Dolphin Divers who disappeared during a training exercise twenty years earlier.

While fending off the FBI and local police, Rolly uncovers tantalizing connections between Fleetwood, a crusading journalist, a celebrity artist, a punk rock singer, a radical animal-rights organization, and the dead woman's own dysfunctional family. As he races against the authorities to uncover Arion's true identity, Rolly's investigation begins to reverberate with his own painful history. His search for the truth leads to a ruined casino on a deserted Mexican island where shocking secrets are unleashed in a ruthless showdown between tormented and tormentors.

About this title

About the Author

"A powerful new voice on the crime-fiction scene" (ForeWord Reviews), Corey Lynn Fayman has made a career of avoiding the sunlight in his hometown of San Diego, California, where he's done hard time as a keyboard player for local bands, a sound designer for the world-famous Old Globe Theatre, and an interactive designer for organizations both corporate and sundry. Armed with a B.A. in Creative Writing from UCLA and an M.A. in Educational Technology from SDSU, he's also taught technology and design courses at various colleges and universities in Southern California.

Fayman's adventures working for the infamous Internet startup MP3.com led him to conceive the character of Rolly Waters, the guitar-playing detective first featured in the San Diego Book Awards nominated mystery, Black's Beach Shuffle. Unduly encouraged by this early success, he set about writing a second Rolly Waters Mystery, Border Field Blues, winner of the Genre Award at the 2013 Hollywood Book Festival. Desert City Diva, the third novel in the series, was a bronze award winner in Foreword Reviews 2015 Indiefab Book of the Year Awards. The latest in the series, Ballast Point Breakdown, was recently published by Konstellation Press.

From the Inside Flap

"Nobody lives forever. Or do they? Hop on board. Fasten your seat-belts and say your prayers. Ballast Point Breakdown opens with the wind tearing at your face as you bounce across San Diego Bay in the moonlite, hurtling toward a fiery collision of the past and the present. Guitar playing Private Eye Rolly Waters finds that the truth has a way of floating to the surface and that other things are perhaps best forgotten."

- G.M. Ford, author of the Leo Waterman crime series

"After a woman from his rock 'n' roll past orchestrates a remarkably rococo ending for herself, Rolly Waters is pulled into an investigation that uncovers a secret military program, an astonishing web of lies, and a pod of well-trained dolphins. Ballast Point Breakdown is a terrific read, featuring a cast of wise-cracking characters navigating some very dark waters. This is Fayman firing on all cylinders."

- Bill Fitzhugh, author of Human Resources and Pest Control

"Private Eye Roland Waters investigates with the cool, laconic style of the blues guitarist he is. Fayman delivers a twisted tale that starts with a bang and unfurls like a breaker in the San Diego surf."

- Matt Goldman NYT Bestselling Author and Shamus Award Nominee

"As a San Diego author and some-time musician, BALLAST POINT BREAKDOWN spoke to me on so many levels -- the unique San Diego settings, the dolphins (!!) and of course, the musician jokes (How many guitarists DOES it take to screw in a lightbulb, anyway?). But you don't have to be a San Diego musician to enjoy this twisty mystery -- just someone who enjoys a truly original story and a protagonist unlike any other in crime fiction."

- Lisa Brackmann, author of ROCK PAPER TIGER and BLACK SWAN RISING.

"Dolphins, a dead environmental activist, a defense contractor, and a shadowy harmonica player are all pieces to an exciting, twisty mystery jigsaw puzzle in Corey Lynn Fayman's BALLAST POINT BREAKDOWN. Musician turned private eye Rolly Waters isn't your average gumshoe. In Fayman's skilled hands Waters is clever, funny and intrepid. But he's much more, a scarred hero who carries the guilt from a decades old tragedy that makes him a real, fleshed-out character who you root and fear for as he follows clues no matter how dark an alley they lead him down. Bravo, Mr. Fayman!"

- Matt Coyle, author of the award-winning Rick Cahill crime series

Edition details

• Publisher: Konstellation Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 099919898X
• ISBN 13: 9780999198988
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352