Rabbit Shine

Jake Eliam spent a lifetime in baseball, until a chance turn that led him into the Atlanta neighborhood known as ChickenBone, where he ended up a part time private investigator thanks to a timely meeting with the man everybody called Catfish, the owner of the legendary 3 Pigs BBQ. Now Catfish feeds him a case every now and then, and pulled pork sandwiches almost every day.

When the top big league prospect for the Atlanta Peaches is killed in a car accident, two weeks after being called up to the Majors, the city mourns a future star. But then someone sends the team a handwritten note suggesting it was no accident and the team’s All Star bad boy outfielder Billy Joe Weede was somehow involved.

With a background and contacts in the game, Jake Eliam is hired to find out the truth, or at least that is what it seems like at first. The investigation takes him from the streets of ChickenBone, to the Peaches locker room, and to the tiny town of Birdsong Georgia, where he discovers that finding out the truth is just as hard as hitting a 90 miles per hour fastball, and just as dangerous.

So in between his part time job making custom baseball bats in his well-worn shop in ChickenBone, Eliam teams up with Catfish and his neighbor, a young photographer to figure out what really happened.

Along the way he runs into a wealthy former member of Congress with a penchant for quoting scriptures, two rednecks named Tater and Booger, an ex-con hired killer who scrapes up dead chickens for a living, a tattooed stripper, a flop eared dog named Chance, and a former sheriff turned moonshiner.

Wading in amongst this crowd to find the truth sends Jake Eliam into extra innings and the final score includes greed, ambition, jealousy, regret, and murder.