The Gripes of Roth

About the Book

The estate of a wealthy photographer hires private detective Rocky Stonebrook to find someone. “Whom do you want me to find?” asks Stonebrook. The executrix and the probate attorney explain that in his will, the decedent, Jerry Roth, left one-fourth of his money to someone named Robert Johnson, of whom no one in the family or anyone among his colleagues or friends has ever heard. With the help of his trusty partner, Lauren Marlo, Stonebrook sets out to do the impossible. Unlike the movies, this private detective agency has more than one client. So Stonebrook is also engaged to assist a defense counsel in an army court martial; and Lauren takes on the task of finding a retired lawyer to testify in a case where someone who signed a prenuptial agreement twenty years earlier now is getting divorced and wants the court to invalidate the prenup. The Gripes of Roth is the fourth in the series featuring Rocky Stonebrook as the central character. In the other three, Stonebrook is hired by the National Hitpersons Society to locate the killer of a hitwoman (Action); looks for someone in the Witness Protection Program (Behind the Curtain); and goes undercover on a merchant ship to check out allegations of murder on the high seas (Tossed Overboard). Sabio has also written a fifth novel, a nonviolent sc-fi book (not in the Stonebrook series) called 2358, named for the year in which the protagonist wakes up after having been vitrified (frozen).

About the Author

If he were a player in the NFL, sportswriters would call Garibaldi Sabio “well-traveled.” He has moved around a good deal: He has been a doctoral candidate in Comparative Tropical history, a former assistant to a mayor, a community action factotum, Chief Planner for a Governor’s Manpower Office, a data privacy maven, an attorney, a trainer of mediators and arbitrators, a law professor, a newspaper editor-in-chief, a columnist in a lawyers’ magazine, and a Community College Spanish teacher. He is convinced that his family serves as proof of gender balance in the Milky Way because he and his wife are the parents of six daughters and nine grandsons. He and his wife live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where, among other things, Sabio is a member of the Jackson Hole Writers Group, leads walking tours of Jackson for the Jackson Hole Historical Society, and is the Lyricist for the Jackson Mounted Patrol.