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East Bay is big enough to have some of the features of a larger beach town (think hotels and high-rises) like Ocean City, MD, but still small enough to feel like old world Florida in other places. It’s a completely different place when you head West over the 30 Bridge, where the Sun, sand, and water give way to tractors, 4 wheelers, and farms. It’s a place with a thousand different faces, and places were the characters are as memorable as the town itself.
A detective in the beach town of East Bay is fighting to stay sober and sane, after some intense personal challenges have driven him to his breaking point. Between the craziness of summer season’s at the beach, an endless stream of events that find their way into the town, and a crazy collection of friends, residents, and colleagues, the only thing that might be able to save his soul is the ocean and his one-eyed dog.
Detective Marc McKinley is ready for a change. Police work has started to wear on him and his focus right now is on staying sober after an incident 9 months earlier nearly derailed his career. When a large EDM Festival comes to the town of EastBay for Memorial Day weekend, Marc becomes personally involved when his nephew’s girlfriend takes a bad pill at the show and ends up in a coma. To make the stakes even higher, the son of a Senator who is suspected of being one of the dealers, is found murdered at a neighboring campground. Marc quickly finds himself embroiled in a world of fraternity privilege, festival excess, bikers, and a festival organizer with more enemies than he can keep track of. Can he and his fellow Detective, Carly Hill, unravel the puzzle before the pill wreaks any more havoc?
Summer is in full swing in East Bay, as an eccentric billionaire with one of the largest outdoor companies in the country, has brought the final stop of the “King of The Coast Tournament” to town, carrying with it the largest jackpot in fishing history. The owner of the Fish Tales marina in East Bay, Paul Jackson finds himself squarely in the middle of all the action and comes across an old rival from his days fishing professionally. A guy he lost his first wife to…and his sponsorship. When the man is found dead on his boat after a big night of festivities, Paul quickly becomes the prime suspect. With millions of dollars on the line, the mafia poking its head around every corner of the event, and allegations of cheating around every corner, the waterfront in East Bay will never be the same again. Can Detective Marc McKinley clear his best friend’s name and bring the killer to justice before they sail on out of town?
Eugene Owen’s debut series of novels is about a Detective named Marc McKinley living in the beach town of East Bay. After 20+ years of personally living in and surfing in East Coast Beach Towns, from New Hampshire to Miami, I wanted to bring the best of all of them together into a new town for readers to fall in love with. This series has been in my head for years, and one day I finally started putting it down on paper. Like anyone who picks up one of my books, you probably stayed up late into the night as a kid reading the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, and ventured later in life to guys like Johnson, Box, White, Hiassen, and Deaver. My passion for surfing and the ocean, coupled with my love of adventure and travel, are the foundation of these books. After almost two decades spent in the restaurant/bar/nightclub business, I feel like I have plenty of inspiration to draw from, and it is my hope that readers of the series will love the characters, places, and plots as much as I have loved creating them.
