High Jinx

HIGH JINX

A missing woman. A floating drug bale. And a retirement plan that involves maritime salvage law, tax debt, and a loaded flare gun.

When Florida private investigator Gumbo Malone is hired to find a missing Cedar Key fisherman named Jinx Hollister, the case sounds simple enough. Jinx vanished after her boat was found drifting offshore with no sign of its owner.

Then Gumbo learns the boat smells like an old drug bust.

The deeper he digs, the stranger things become.

Jinx hasn't been kidnapped.

She hasn't been murdered.

She's hiding in the mangroves with a barnacle-covered package she dragged out of the Gulf and fully intends to sell to solve her financial problems. Unfortunately, the package doesn't belong to her. It belongs to a group of desperate Miami crypto-bros working for people who don't tolerate lost inventory.

Now Gumbo finds himself caught between a stubborn retiree armed with a rusty flare gun, a pair of terrified cartel middlemen, an overambitious law enforcement officer chasing a career-making arrest, and a hundred-pound mystery package everyone seems willing to risk their lives to recover.

As airboats race through mangrove tunnels, deals unravel, loyalties shift, and the Gulf Coast descends into chaos, Gumbo must find a way to keep everyone alive long enough to untangle the mess before greed, panic, and bad decisions sink everyone involved.

Filled with eccentric Florida characters, laugh-out-loud dialogue, colorful local legends, outrageous situations, and the unique charm of Cedar Key, HIGH JINX is another wildly entertaining Gumbo Malone mystery where common sense is always in short supply and trouble is usually just one bad decision away.

Perfect for readers who enjoy Florida mysteries, humorous crime fiction, private investigator novels, amateur sleuth adventures, Carl Hiaasen-style humor, coastal mysteries, quirky crime capers, small-town mysteries, and unforgettable characters caught in ridiculous situations.