Dying for the Highlife

A hard-boiled private-eye crime novel in which a $43 million lottery win drags every grudge from a small-time hustler’s past out of the woodwork. Nevada noir grit, cartel kidnapping stakes and a two-man investigative team who fight dirty when they have to.

Jimmy Homestead’s glory days as a high school stud were a distant memory. His adulthood had am But he always felt he was special, and winning a $43 million lottery proved it.

With all that money, everything is great for Jimmy, until people from his past start coming out of the woodwork. First, his sexy stepmother, who seduced him as a teenager. Then his uncle, just released from Folsom after a five-year jolt for securities fraud, a crime that bankrupted Jimmy’s father. Mix in a broke ex-stripper and a down-on-his luck drug dealer, both seeking payback over transgressions Jimmy thought were long forgotten.

Caught in the middle are private detective Dan Reno and his good buddy Cody Gibbons, two guys just trying to make a honest paycheck. Reno, fighting to save his home from foreclosure, thinks that’s his biggest problem. But his priorities change when Gibbons and Jimmy are kidnapped by a gang of cartel thugs out for a big score. Fighting to save his friend’s life, Reno is a hard-boiled mess that leaves dead bodies scattered all over northern Nevada.

Dying for the Highlife is book five in the Dan Reno Novel Series, a thriller for fans of Michael Connelly and Robert Crais.