Liquid Smoke

You'll Love This If:

• You love reading fiction novels
• You enjoy mystery novels

Private eye Noah Braddock has finally found peace in his once tumultuous relationship with Detective Liz Santangelo and has called a tentative truce with his alcoholic mother, Carolina. So when lawyer Darcy Gill demands that he look into a hopeless death row case, he’s more interested in catching some waves before San Diego’s rare winter weather takes hold. Then Darcy plays her trump card: the man scheduled to die—convicted of killing two men in cold blood—is the father Noah never knew.

What Readers are Saying

“At the beginning of a bleak February in San Diego, Noah, an independent, surfer PI, is feeling fairly content; alas, his life is in tatters by the 28th. Shelby’s third entry (after Wicked Break) catches you from the first wave, when Noah learns his father, whom he has never met, is on San Quentin’s Death Row. After the woman who told Noah about his father turns up dead, Noah is compelled to pursue a past he’s always chosen to ignore. Soon Noah is crisscrossing San Diego’s inner realms, fighting with local casino thugs and trying not to panic Mexican immigrants in El Centro, who’d just as soon have him go away. Noah’s first-person narrative makes his confusion very personal, and the fear factor ratchets up with each chapter. VERDICT With plenty of twists and a startling, compelling pace, this mystery will make readers hope Noah finds some justice in the bad set he’s inherited. Hard-boiled but not quite as noir as Don Winslow or Kem Nunn, Shelby’s book will appeal to Robert Crais fans for the sense of place and the lonely world the protagonists occupy.”
—Library Journal

“Jeff Shelby’s searing third Noah Braddock novel takes the San Diego surfer and PI into a heartbreaking, life-changing case of loss and discovery . . . Shelby pulls no punches in this raw confrontation between a stone-cold killer and a man pushed beyond the brink.”
—Publishers Weekly