"His eyelids narrowed perceptibly. You might almost say it amounted to a hearty laugh, I suppose, considering what he'd been through. Rolling his head on the pillow, he looked up at me. When the movement brought the taped part of his skull into contact with the pillow, his eyes wavered for a moment. Turning his head back the other way a bit, he still kept his eyes on me as he said, 'Thanks.'"
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The Forever Girl by Chris O'Grady Amazon Digital
book review by Dylan Ward
It begins in the desert. A body is dumped from a car and James Brandon is the unlucky witness to the incident. He tries to help the injured man but his attempts become complicated when he returns with the police to the desert only to find the man has since disappeared. Later, James is called to the hospital to identify a heavily bandaged man who may be the same person from the desert, but James is unable to successfully identify him. Then the man disappears from the hospital and the police begin a desperate search to find him. Out of the blue, an old friend named Jack Harvey appears and James is reluctantly recruited back into the private eye business.
As James gets more involved with his assignments and continues to help the police with the missing man search, he soon finds himself in a quagmire when the shady, Les Wyatt, gives James an ultimatum to find the man from the desert. James is now caught between helping the police and the looming threat of Wyatt's men in a matter of life or death all because of the missing desert man. With no choice, James is alone and without a friend he can trust, and he sets off to find the answers himself to this dangerous mystery.
Considering the classic noir crime novel, O'Grady does not disappoint with his story of double crossing, private eyes, beautiful women, money heists, criminals, and the law all set against the backdrop of the Nevada desert and infamous Vegas. Like Chinatown, this is a story of a private eye who simply gets caught up in the wrong situation at the wrong time and must use his smarts and skills to get out alive.