Jeff Davis Swaine digs up evidence for a Raleigh, North Carolina, trial law firm. Like Raleigh, Swaine is Southern with blue-collar roots but now finds himself more at home in an Audi convertible than a rusty pickup. When one of the firm's clients comes home to find his McMansion burglarized -- and his new wife's dog dead in the kitchen -- the man suspects his ex-wife. But Swaine senses this is someone far more dangerous. From a stolen minivan, washed-up jazz bassist Leonard Noblac watches as Swaine begins to investigate. He's ready to perform his next crime to punish the zeros in the soulless suburb of Rocky Falls, and he's happy to have Swaine in his audience. Used to working from the shadow at the back of the stage, Leonard intends to put down a throbbing beat of crime and destruction in Rocky Falls -- a jazz album of felonies, the performance he knows will finally make him famous. Jeff must find Leonard and stop him -- but that will put those closest to Jeff in mortal danger.
Bryan Gilmer has been a professional writer for 15 years. He worked as a newspaper reporter for nine years, five at Florida's largest newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize-winning St. Petersburg Times. His investigative reporting there shut down dangerous Alzheimer's care homes, exposed a former amusement park worker posing as a real estate developer and revealed that two women had staged an empty-casket funeral for a man who didn't exist. In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, Bryan and colleagues first told the nation that uncounted overseas ballots wouldn't let Al Gore defeat George W. Bush, and Bryan appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" to discuss the story.
Previously, Bryan was night police reporter at The Greenville News in South Carolina, where he covered scores of homicides, plane crashes, bank robberies and fatal car wrecks. That experience figures prominently in his crime novels.
Bryan has a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He teaches newswriting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has lectured at the Poynter Institute for media studies, Clemson University, The University of South Florida and Stetson University Law School. He lives with his wife, Kelly, and their son, Quinn, in Durham, North Carolina, where he writes fiction and runs his own writing and editing business.
