Just Below The Surface

This is the fifth in a series of novels that revolve around JP Parker a 100 year old long time retired New York City private detective from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. The novels are his first person recollections as told to a young writer who is compiling them into book form. This time after impressing in a fund raising baseball game with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field in early 1951, Parker is subsequently hired by their owner, Walter O'Malley, to locate a missing rookie pitcher. The job starts out easily but is soon complicated by the player's hidden past, a Pennsylvania town with dark secrets, and the rookie's beautiful, but troubled, widowed mother. Before long Parker is blackmailed into assisting the FBI in a case that, if mishandled, has the potential to set off World War III. In a wild finale that stretches from Pennsylvania to Maine to far out at sea in the Atlantic Ocean, Parker willingly gives up his chance for happiness with the woman he loves to try to thwart a threat against the United States.