The Underground Asylum

About the Book

MARK CONLAN, and his son, JESSE, move to California after Mark's messy divorce. Mark buys extensive acreage adjoining a twenty-two thousand acre wilderness area, near San Francisco.

Decapitated murder victims are discovered on and around Mark's property. Mark falls in love with a widowed neighbor, JUANITA VARGAS. Jesse explores the hills and mountains on their property. ROOSTER MADSON and WHEELS WHEELER, two homicide detectives are unable to solve the series of murders.

Jesse stumbles upon a vast underground cave complex on their property. He and Mark attempt to explore the cave but are driven out due to their inexperience. Mark hires a private detective, ACE BALLARD, who just happens to be a spelunker, to investigate two hostile neighbors. Soon Jesse is kidnapped. Mark and Ace explore the cave and are attacked by the killer. They find five mummified heads in the cave--their identities unknown.

Mark and Ace are trapped in the cave and a horrifying game of cat-and-mouse ensues with the elusive killer. Rooster enters the cave and disappears. The murderer,cornered in his underground lair, is killed--the case apparently solved. Then the surprising mastermind emerges, re-igniting the chase. The riddle of Jesse's fate is finally determined in the story's exciting climax.

About the Author

Dan Belton is a graduate of the University of Idaho and a U. S. Marine Corps veteran. After graduation from college, he worked in sales and marketing for a major pharmaceutical company. A few years later he left the pharmaceutical industry and successfully owned and operated several businesses of his own. After he sold his businesses he entered the financial services industry as a stock broker and financial planner. He worked for Merrill Lynch, Dean Witter, and Paine Webber. He left the financial services industry in 1999 to devote full time to writing. Dan Belton is married with three children. He currently resides in the San Francisco bay area.