A Truth Stranger than Fiction: A Dakota Stevens Mystery

Fans of Mickey Spillane’s more over-the-top Mike Hammer adventures will welcome Orcutt’s third Dakota Stevens outing (after 2014’s The Rich Are Different). The PI has just moved into a new Manhattan office when a desperate prospective client, 18-year-old Kelsey Wright, asks him to find her missing brother, Conover, a famous science fiction writer who was working on a mysterious new work of nonfiction. But even before Dakota can agree to help Kelsey, who’s also upset that she’s being tailed, a string of intruders to his office, including FBI agents, thugs from Nebraska, and two mobsters, insist on learning what Kelsey knows about Conover’s whereabouts. Dakota and Kelsey later go on the lam, aided by an eccentric group of allies headed by Svetlana Krüsh, a former U.S. chess champion, who plays the role of Velda (Mike Hammer’s secretary) to Dakota. Readers should expect plenty of bloodshed and action en route to an unexpected resolution of the mystery. [em](BookLife) [/em]