Bird Dog (A Car Noir Thriller)

After a tantalizing woman asks him to help her expose some crooked car dealers who happen to be his co-workers, Harold Dodge finds himself careering down a Los Angeles highway with a corpse in his trunk. Reprint.

Harold Dodge, overweight and pushing 50 hard, loves woman and cars. So when the extremely striking Marianna Perado interrupts his acquisition of a real cream puff--an '86 Maxima that he knows he can slap a $100 detail job on, then resell for an extra $1000--and asks for his help in getting her trade-in back from the hotshot dealer he used to work for, Harold just can't say no. Within minutes, he's up to his ears in dangerous deals and scams that escalate into a carnival of terror. If Florida's Carl Hiassen moved to the seamier side of Los Angeles, this first novel might well be the kind of thing he'd come up with. But former journalist and television writer Philip Reed has already claimed the territory, and is at work on his second mystery about Harold Dodge.