Baseline Road

Southern California, May 1970. In the turmoil following Nixon’s Cambodia invasion and the Kent State killings, a young economics professor is killed in a campus bombing. Authorities conclude she was an unintended victim and arrest a known radical. Case closed. Nearly two years have passed when an old hippie says, “The Claremont bombings, the FBI pigs got it all wrong,” to Jimmy Sommes, a San Bernardino County homicide investigator and country-rock fiddler, at one of Jimmy’s gigs. Sommes and Claremont Detective Carol Loomis look into the case and realize that things are not as they seem. Shadowy figures emerge, including Collins, a vicious but troubled hitman. Was it a cleverly disguised murder? Jimmy and Carol, both enmeshed in improbable romantic relationships with characters who are possible suspects, believe the answer may be found on Baseline Road, a lonely stretch of highway that time has forgotten.

Orlando Davidson graduated from Claremont Men’s (now McKenna) College and UCLA School of Law in the 1970’s and headed west to the Hawaiian Islands. After a thirty-five year career in Hawaii working as an attorney, planner, lobbyist, and public official, Orlando relocated to western North Carolina and began to write fiction. Baseline Road is his first novel, and was shaped by his experiences during the Kent State protest days. He now resides in Portland, Oregon.