Cleanin' Up: A Texas Crime Novel - Hardcover

Perkins, David M

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798994640630

Publisher: Tejasca Publishing, 2026

Synopsis

Maggie Fowler was never supposed to disappear.

When she vanishes from her North Texas ranch, the ties to oil money, trucking contracts, and quiet political favors turn dangerous fast.

Charlie Tabor knows the terrain. He knows the people. And he knows some crimes don't happen in the dark. What begins as a missing-person case pulls him into a web hidden behind legitimate businesses, federal oversight, and institutions built to survive blame.

As the search deepens, justice becomes negotiable, evidence disappears, and the truth has a very short shelf life. Bringing Maggie home means confronting the cost of loyalty - and whether survival is sometimes the only victory left.

Cleanin' Up is a Texas crime thriller about abduction, power, and the systems that decide what gets buried-and what doesn't.

Some messes don't get cleaned up.

They just get survived.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author
 
David M. Perkins grew up in Texas and now lives in Los Angeles. He spent three decades working in film and television post-production. He is a longtime member of the Writers Guild of America and has been a contract writer for Columbia Pictures Television.
 
He is the author of on LIFE: Rants, Tributes and Lessons Learned in No Particular Order and other nonfiction. Cleanin' Up is his first Texas-set crime novel.

From the Back Cover

Maggie Fowler was never supposed to disappear.

When she vanishes from her North Texas ranch, the ties to oil money, trucking contracts, and quiet political favors quickly turn dangerous.

Charlie Tabor knows the terrain. He knows the people. And he knows that some crimes don't happen in the dark. What begins as a missing-person case pulls him into a web of crime hidden behind legitimate businesses, federal oversight, and institutions designed to survive blame.

As the search deepens, justice becomes negotiable, evidence disappears, and the truth proves to have a very short shelf life. What starts as an effort to bring Maggie home forces Charlie to confront the cost of loyalty, the limits of accountability, and whether survival is sometimes the only victory left.

Cleanin' Up is a Texas crime novel about abduction, power, and the systems that decide what gets buried — and what doesn't.

Some messes don't get cleaned up.
They just get survived.

From the Inside Flap

Cleanin' Up

In Texas, power doesn't always look like power. Sometimes it looks like process.

A missing woman. A search that runs into paperwork, policies, and people who know how to make problems disappear without leaving fingerprints. The danger isn't just what happened — it's what gets changed after the fact.

And time isn't neutral. The longer Maggie stays missing, the less useful it is for anyone to keep her alive.

Cleanin' Up is a crime novel set in North Texas, where the cleanest cover-ups aren't violent. They're procedural.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tejasca Publishing
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798994640630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368