Hard Water: 1 (A Brando Riley Mystery)

A beautiful young bartender. A midnight flirtation narrowly resisted. And less than twenty-four hours later, her body washes up against the jetty rocks of a sleepy California beach town.

Brando Riley is a burned-out investigative journalist chasing one last shot at relevance. Forty-seven, divorced, estranged from the daughter he adores, and hollowed out by years of casual regrets, he's come to Oxnard to settle his late aunt's affairs and file a puff piece on the Starkwell Oil Company's massive coastal spill. What he finds instead is a corporate cover-up drenched in crude, a dead girl the authorities are all too willing to write off as an accidental drowning, and the creeping certainty that Hayley Jacobsen's fate and his own are somehow bound together.

Hayley was a champion swimmer. She didn't just drown. And Riley, no tough guy but armed with a stubborn pen and a nose for corporate rot, can't let it go - even as the trail leads into darker water than he ever bargained for. Between a scarred ex-Soviet neighbor with mysterious wealth, a nervous editor pulling his lifeline, and an oil company willing to bury anything that threatens its bottom line, Riley finds himself investigating not only a murder but the man he's become.

Atmospheric, morally searching, and propulsive, this is West Coast noir for readers who like their thrillers with grit under the fingernails and something true at the core. Perfect for fans of Michael Connelly, Don Winslow, and T. Jefferson Parker.

Born and raised in New York City, author Adam Gorgoni now lives in Los Angeles where he has enjoyed a decades-long career as a film composer with dozens of film and TV scores to his credit. Notable projects include the indie cult classic Waiting, Sundance favorite Starting Out in the Evening, and Deauville Grand Prize winner The Dead Girl. Not too proud to serve the overlords of corporate America, Gorgoni has extensive experience in music for advertising. He is also a longtime lover of musical theater, is at work on two musicals, and was a co-producer of the Broadway show Head Over Heels, which featured the music of The Go-Gos.Music will always be his first love, but during the pandemic he rekindled a rather torrid affair with another mistress-crime fiction. His short stories have now appeared in several anthologies including (I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight: Crime Fiction Inspired by One-Hit Wonders and A Killing At The Copa: Crime Fiction Inspired By The Music Of Barry Manilow from White City Press. Hard Water is his first novel, and he has begun work on a sequel. He and his wife share their home with at least one cat at all times. More at www.adamgorgoni.com.