Key West

About the Book

A Max Cleveland Mystery, is the second in a series of novels featuring a flawed and somewhat reluctant P.I. named Max Cleveland.  Born in a Los Angeles orphanage and forced to skip childhood, Max is still a 50’s nostalgia nut with a keen eye for detail and a love of Charlie Chan, hot rods and junk food.

     Max used to live in L.A. and was married until his wife became a murder victim in the epidemic of car-jackings plaguing L.A.   The L.A.P.D. couldn’t or didn’t get around to solving her murder – Max did.  A heap of Hollywood style publicity around the case struck a Charles Bronson chord with the ever drama hungry L.A. populous. Requests to solve other hopeless cold cases flowed in.

     An old Navy buddy, who hardly ever calls, does.  Out of the blue he wants Max to come down to Florida for a little vacation, compliments of Uncle Sam.  His ‘moniker’ in the Navy was ‘Stingray’.  Ray Fenton now flies for the DEA around the Florida Keys.  It’s been cold in San Ramon – Florida sounds good to Max.

     The little vacation lands him a new identity and a stint in federal prison.  Then a job with the FEDS trying to find out why a lot of agents are turning up dead in Key West while they’re going after a Russian Mafia character named Ivan Ditson.  Ray recruits Max to help find out who the stoolie in town is.  The whole thing simmers into a gumbo mix made up of strippers, Russian ‘goodfellas’, lawyers, bad cops, a minister, a lesbian and Stingray’s beautiful daughter whose in the middle of the whole thing.

About the Author

Numerous parallels between Alan Austin and Max Cleveland are no coincidence. From St. Anne’s Home to the soap opera, Max has traced a lot of Alan’s footsteps. Alan has also published a book of photographs entitled “Los Angeles Afternoons” and has two other photo books in the works – “Hollywood Comics” and “Still Noir”. He has written several screenplays - one of which, $21Mil, he’s now producing as an independent film. Like Max, he lives in an airplane hangar and is currently working on the third Max Cleveland Mystery – “ Smart Monkey”.