Headlong

It's a hot Boston summer, and Nick Young, a washed-up journalist back in town to care for his dying father, is feeling the heat. Using his old skills to solve a mystery before the police do: to connect the dots between a major labor strike, a violent Occupy-style movement, and a murder that may involve his best friend's teen son. Headlong is a literary thriller about fathers, sons, eco-terrorism, murder, immaturity, anarchism, marriage, friendship, and failure. In Headlong, Boston is in the throes of an ugly labor strike, pitting janitors against corporate leaders with everyone, including the mayor, taking sides. A wave of anti-globalist violence has hit town, with attacks against businesses, and demonstrations that call out the riot squad. Nick a 42-year-old former journalist, once Boston s top investigative reporter is reluctantly back from LA, on the rebound from a failed marriage, tending to his dying father. When the home of a wealthy suburban family is robbed in broad daylight and the family s teenage son critically beaten, the police are suspiciously clueless. Nick pokes around out of professional habit and idle curiosity. Robbery. Strike. Eco-terrorism. Somehow it s all connected, and somehow Nick is in the middle, as journalist, self-appointed social conscience, and friend to a teen who might or might not be implicated. Soon, his teen pal s girlfriend has disappeared, two janitors turn up dead in a dubious accident, and the various tensions in town start leading to the same roots: a high-profile business leader, a handful of politically fervent teens, a retired police chief, and the echoes of a crime left unsolved a generation before.