In
To Catch the Moon, we meet
Deputy District
Attorney Alicia Maldonado. Alicia grew up on the wrong side of
California’s Monterey Peninsula: not in Pebble Beach,
gorgeous seaside enclave of the wealthy and powerful, but in
dusty inland Salinas, home to generations of farm workers
and day laborers. Though every bit as beautiful and
intelligent as the privileged women who live in the
fog-shrouded acres by the sea, Alicia has had to scrabble up
the hard way, supporting her mother and younger sisters
after her father died, putting herself through college and
law school, and now competing in the gritty world of
criminal prosecution.
Then one chilly December night, timber millionaire Daniel
Gaines, who just launched a campaign for California
governor, is found dead in his Carmel home. Though all the evidence points to an
environmental extremist as the killer, Alicia becomes
obsessed with the idea that Gaines was murdered by his own
wife, the pampered only child of a former California
governor. As Alicia investigates the killing, she clashes
repeatedly with Milo Pappas, a Greek ambassador’s son turned
primetime network correspondent who is just as anxious to
prove the lovely widow innocent as Alicia is to prove her
guilty.
As journalist and prosecutor scramble to uncover the truth,
first in opposition to one another and later as allies,
Alicia is forced to examine her true motivation: Is it in
fact the noble pursuit of justice? Or perhaps an ignoble
resentment of the privileged few who reside in the
Peninsula’s wealthier half? Only a brave and honest answer
will set Alicia free from the lifelong grudge that’s put a
stranglehold on both her ambitions and her heart …
Here's a sneak peak at
chapter one …
