Private Power

When the Judge dropped off his young son at the Strand Preschool that morning, he didn’t expect to find a body swinging from the rafters of the preschool’s maintenance room. Nor to be dragged into the middle of allegations of sexual abuse of the young charges attending the preschool. When his former lover is caught up in a national frenzy as the press and the networks rush to judgment, condemning her for child molestation and devil worship, the Judge feels compelled to step forward to help his old flame, leading her defense in a cutthroat jury trial and exposing the real story...

From Avalon's yacht club, through its alleys, sidewalk cafes, and swank watering holes, across its private beaches and beyond, to the airport in the sky, and the party cruise ship sitting offshore, the judge tracks a shadowy killer. And as the town is forced to fight for its very existence against overwhelming odds, the judge finds his romantic relationship compromised by an old flame, forcing him to examine and re-define his own past, before he can risk a new future.

It was supposed to be a working vacation for the Judge, ensconced in a bungalow in Newport Beach with his new and very pregnant wife. But the FBI emerged from the morning’s mist along the Balboa Beach, asking a small favor. The favor detoured into a body, and the body led to questions nobody wanted to ask, a case nobody wanted to work. Dragging the Judge into a web of intrigue and stealth, leaving him to unravel a murder over FBI’s objections. A murder of one of their own.