Miles Ward, Private Eye
“No, DUMDUM, mONSTERS Aren’t real.”
- Miles Ward
Miles believes in a lot of things. He believes that the bottom of a bottle can put an end to his nightmares. He believes that fists can solve most arguments, but guns can stop them. He believes that everyone is a suspect until they ain’t. That’s a big one.
And he doesn’t believe in faith, dieties, magic, or monsters.
But, what if he’s wrong? What if the sudden change in crime rates have nothing to do with mobsters and crooked cops? What if, running loose in 1940’s Los Angeles, things that go bump in the night actually exist? What if the City of Angels is really a City of Demons?
Or what if that is just what someone wants Miles to think?
The Ruby Rage
Decorated for valor on the Pacific Front in WWII, Miles Ward joined the LAPD, making his way to Homicide by the age of thirty. But when he fails to save a kidnapped child, the disgraced LA Homicide Detective is committed to the psychiatric hospital a year. Upon his release, he dives into the bottom of a bottle. Once a decorated cop, Private Eye Ward is forced to take the sleaziest cases just to make ends meet.
Until statuesque movie star Bebe Winglace hires him to find her missing little sister, child star Emily. Miles finds himself battling the demons of his past, swimming the same waters that led to his downfall and drove him to the loony bin.
Following the clues to mob connections in Pittsburgh, Miles finds a connection to the occult and discovers there may actually be more to the world than he’s willing to admit. An admission that may force him to answer the question he’s too afraid to ask.
Do monsters really exist?
The Opal Offering
Regina Crest, an up and coming actress for MGM, is found murdered, skinned alive, her body dumped in an alley. Having had contact with two men of color, Bernard and Jacques, recent transplants to the City of Angels from Lousiana, the brothers are immediately pegged by LA Homicide as the prime suspects.
In a city where corrupt police, racism, and fear of anything that deviates from accepted norms of faith lead to immediate suspicion, the two men find themselves caught in a legal system that only cares about closing cases, not finding truth. When it is discovered that they are practitioners of voodoo their ethnicity and religion are the only evidence the LAPD needs to serve them up for the death penalty.
Wheir aunt, a close friend of Detective Ward, asks for his help, he has no choice but to once again confront his disbelief in the occult and all things spiritual.
When his investigation leads him to a sinister creature known as the Bokor, he once again dives into the underworld of Los Angeles.
Miles must race to find the truth before two innocent men are hanged for a crime they didn’t commit.