Desert Kill Switch

Deadly Vegas Pursuit—with a Twist         

A life-and-death chase across the Nevada desert in the middle of summer highlights the action in Desert Kill Switch a complex mystery spread across the southwest. 

On an empty desert road, stressed-out ex-cop Lyle Deming finds a bullet-riddled body next to a vintage mint-condition 1970s Pontiac Firebird. When he returns to the scene with sheriff's deputies: no car, no body. Does the answer lie in Nostalgia City, the retro theme park where Lyle drives a cab? 
 

Nostalgia City VP Kate Sorensen, a former college basketball star, is in Reno, Nevada, on park business when she gets mixed up with a sleazy Las Vegas auto dealer who puts hidden "kill switches" and GPS trackers into the cars he sells to low-income buyers. Miss a payment—sometimes by as little as a few days—and your car is dead. Maybe you are, too.

When 6'-2½" Kate is accused of murder in Reno, Lyle rushes to help his blonde not-quite-girlfriend. Kate and Lyle plow through a deadly tangle of suspects and motives, hitting one dead end after another, as they struggle to exonerate Kate, catch a blackmailer, save a witness's life, and find the missing car and corpse.

    Desert Kill Switch is the second novel in this mystery series set in Nostalgia City, an Arizona theme park that re-creates a small town from the mid-1970s.  It's complete with period cars, clothes, music, hairstyles, shops, fads, food, restaurants, hotels—the works.

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 "Bacon's prose is slick, his dialogue taut, and he makes great use of short chapters to tempt the reader to keep turning those pages. His creation of Nostalgia City, a retro theme park in which nothing older than 1975 is allowed, is a stroke of genius!

"The titular 'kill switch'—a device that stops an engine stone dead if the owner hasn't kept up with their rental payment—is a new one on me. But it's a real thing, and pretty horrifying. Google it. It's as good a plot device as any to fuel this mystery story and Bacon extrapolates brilliantly to expose a whole world of corporate corruption lurking under the metaphorical hood."

--Mark Campbell, Mystery People (UK)