Gumshoe

Ten-year LAPD sergeant, Walter Sunderland was about to cross off another item on his personal bucket list. He would soon be transferring out of uniform patrol and head downtown to the elite Robbery Homicide Division as an LAPD detective. Working RHD was his dream job and like most things in his life, whatever he set his mind to, he usually succeeded.

Married to a beautiful woman who made twice the money he did selling million-dollar homes in the trendy upscale neighborhood of Porter Ranch in the northwest San Fernando Valley, where they now lived themselves, was just the frosting on the cake. It would only take one act of pure stupidity to rear its ugly head, that would bring his world crashing down around him.

Now, fired from the police department, divorced from his wife, and after serving a short prison sentence, he was just a heartbeat away from becoming a down and out homeless street person himself. Living in a cheap downtown hotel that overlooked skid row, he was now working menial part-time jobs trying to keep his head above water to survive.

It would be the very woman who accused him of rape under the color of authority that got him fired from the force and sent him to jail, who was now pleading for his help. She herself was now the number one suspect in the murder of her former husband and with limited funds, she had nowhere to turn.

The two unlikely pair would join forces to spar with her former dead husband’s new wife along with the LAPD detectives investigating his murder and at the same time, deal with their own ongoing mistrust for one another.

Without the use of any of the LAPD’s resources provided to regular sworn detectives on the job, Sunderland was now being measured by everyone around him as nothing more than a washed-up Gumshoe, a term he hated with contempt. Even so, he now would have to rely on his own wit and expertise as he follows up on his instincts, leads and scenarios to come up with answers he so desperately needed. Those answers wouldn’t come easy after hitting one roadblock after another as he tried to piece together the realities and assumptions that no one else was willing to tackle. Together, Walt Sunderland and Gretchen Quinn’s journey would take them to an unpredictable and shocking conclusion.