Saving Jake (Parker McLeod Thriller). This item is unavailable.Saving Jake (Parker McLeod Thriller)

Something gnaws at Parker McLeod telling him to drive away, but the ghostly-thin mother and her troubled 14-year-old son with his vacant eyes, tugs at Parker's conscious. He can't leave them behind. Against his better judgment, he loads the hitchhikers into his old Chevy pickup, a move that threatens his quiet life as the proprietor of The Garhole Bar, a favorite watering hole out among the rattlesnakes and prickly pear on the far west end of Galveston Island. The pile of trouble he has picked up becomes obvious when a man with a gun wants him to pull over. After a harrowing shootout, Parker thinks he's rid of the duo, but when the boy appears at The Garhole, Parker sees flashes of his own childhood and is torn between mentoring the boy and breaking all ties. Enter Clementine Garza, a sexy, baton-wielding, trash-talking P.I. from San Antonio. Clementine is hot on the trail of a case concerning a Boston billionaire seeking the truth behind his son’s disappearance. As Parker and Clementine’s paths merge, the tension ramps up to an explosive ending full of treachery and betrayal.

As a fourth generation Texan and Galveston resident, A. Hardy Roper writes from a wealth of knowledge about the island’s storied past and vibrant present. Mr. Roper’s great grandparents arrived from Germany in the 1840’s and entered through the Port of Galveston, at the time, second only to New York for immigrant destination. Today’s Galveston is an eclectic mixture of ‘old money’ and Victorian mansions checkered among indigent neighborhoods of African Americans and Hispanics, all weaved tightly together, as if huddled against the onslaught of the next storm like the epic 1900 hurricane that claimed 6,000 lives. From its 19th Century past of pirates and buried treasures, to its 20th Century lifestyle of bootlegging, bawdy houses and gambling, Galveston Island offers an endless setting for mystery and intrigue. A. Hardy Roper has studied its culture and its history. His Parker McLeod mysteries weave an intricate path of deceit and mayhem as the city struggles to balance its colorful past with the inevitable collision of sleepy ‘island life’ and the hurried weekend rush as the playground of Houston’s wealthy baby-boomers.