Meet Bailey Crane, a man with a life many men would only dream of having. Bailey is an actor on the local and regional scene, doing television commercials, print modeling, film, and some theater. He's a private investigator for a few attorney friends in Phoenix, a former full-time cop, and is now an auxiliary detective for the Phoenix PD. Bailey has love, friends, golf, and a bon vivant life style. For the most part the man is a crusader without a cape and has life just about where he wants it. In "An Arizona Tragedy" Bailey Crane's life takes a perilous and tumultuous twist when a young lady friend is brutally murdered in the Arizona desert. The lady friend, Cathy Gibbs, a twenty-six year old single mother of two and actress, goes missing for weeks, is then found in a desert arroyo just northeast of Scottsdale, her skull crushed, her body ravaged and unrecognizable from weeks in the relentless record heat of an Arizona August. Working privately on an estate matter for one of his attorney friends, Bailey finds the name of his lady friend's boyfriend. The discovery does not necessarily have great significance but it does start the wheels turning in the mind of our passionate and contemplative sleuth. Bailey becomes a target for an unknown pursuer and ends up battered, bruised, and angry. His strong feeling of hostility pushes him deeper into his friend's murder, and, finding a possible connecting link, he travels to Washington, D. C., to the hallowed halls and offices of the nation's lawmakers. At his hotel across the Potomac an unknown assassin strikes again, this time wounding our noble 'Sherlock'. The bad guy gets away, and Bailey has a temporary stay in a Reston, Virginia hospital. Through more ironic turns and twists Bailey goes on to solve not only his friend's homicide but another brutal slaying in the nation's capital. With the help of his PPD buddies, and, one very special female cop, the bad guy behind the gruesome killings is caught. The climactic ending scene in this Bailey Crane caper is nail-biting tense and will keep the readers riveted to their seats of choice. "An Arizona Tragedy" was inspired by two actual homicides. The Phoenix slaying of the young mother and model has never been solved - now, a very 'Cold Case' at the Phoenix Police Department. With the decomposition of the body, accelerated by the desert's extreme summer heat and denizens of the habitat, evidence was scarce. This Phoenix murder was also very personal for the author ... he and his wife were friends of the real murder victim. While "An Arizona Tragedy" was written to be commercially acceptable and successful, the author also wanted it to be tokens of love and remembrance, also, just possibly, opening a new door to finding the actual fiend behind the homicide. PLEASE, if anyone can possibly shed any light on this 'cold case', contact the Phoenix, AZ Police Department's 'Cold Case' Division.
