Earth Angel

About the Book

A Max Cleveland Mystery, is the first in a series of novels featuring a flawed and somewhat reluctant P.I. named Max Cleveland.  Born in a Los Angeles orphanage and forced to skip childhood, Max is still a 50’s nostalgia nut with a keen eye for detail and a love of Charlie Chan, hot rods and junk food.

     Max’s curriculum vita includes zookeeper, graphic designer, welder, car mechanic, N.Y. actor, including a stint on a soap opera, and Navy Pilot.  He lives in a N.Y. style loft inside a renovated hangar on the airport in the sleepy town of San Ramon, California near the Pacific Ocean.

    He used to live in L.A. and was married until his wife became a murder victim in the epidemic of car-jackings plaguing L.A.  The L.A.P.D. couldn’t or didn’t get around to solving her murder – Max did.  A heap of Hollywood style publicity around the case, struck a Charles Bronson chord with the ever drama hungry L.A. populous.  Requests to solve other hopeless cold cases flowed in.

     One bright morning before walking over to his favorite 50’s style café, the Flying Tigers, Max got a call from an Angel.  Angel fleet screamed trouble from the moment he met her.  She smelled good and was being blackmailed.  It was enough to get Max hooked.  The crackle of crisp hundred dollar bills in her Prada bag didn’t hurt either.  Angel’s abusive husband, Ruben, wore his acne-scarred face like a tribal mask.  Angel drags Max into a convoluted world where nothing is what it appears to be.  He’s titillated, deceived, beaten by thugs and compelled to come to the plate with some new skills to earn his stripes as detective.

About the Author

Numerous parallels between Alan Austin and Max Cleveland are no coincidence. From St. Anne’s Home to the soap opera, Max has traced a lot of Alan’s footsteps. Alan has also published a book of photographs entitled “Los Angeles Afternoons” and has two other photo books in the works – “Hollywood Comics” and “Still Noir”. He has written several screenplays - one of which, $21Mil, he’s now producing as an independent film. Like Max, he lives in an airplane hangar and is currently working on the third Max Cleveland Mystery – “ Smart Monkey”.