Preview the first chapter of my new book THE STRAND. CHAPTER 1 The Judge pulled into a parking space facing the Ocean Hill Pier to enjoy his Starbucks. And to watch the huge waves pounding the beach and the pier. A storm in Mexico had ignited the surf up and down the West-facing beaches, making for a stunning display of foaming white surf and churning green water, some of the waves reaching ten feet. The pier was taking a beating. He wished he’d time to walk out a bit onto the shuddering structure. He imagined his hair flying in the salty spray, the smell of the waves filling his nostrils, feet planted against the raging wind, wrapped in the old raincoat he kept in the trunk to repel spray. Like a swashbuckling Scottish sea captain of old, feet planted on a bit of flotsam that was his ship. But it was only a fantasy. There wasn’t time. He took a long slug of his Starbucks, feeling the caffeine hit his blood stream like a kick in the pants. Waking him up. He wiped latte foam from his upper lip. He was on route from home in Malaga Cove to his office in Venice. But he’d stopped in the City of Ocean Hill, a small but affluent community tucked above Hermosa Beach to the South, and LAX to the North, and fronting some of the best beach in California. He had to go into the office today for one more case to tidy up. But it seemed like it was always one more. For thirty years now, always just one more case. Time went by, you grew older, a little less hair to comb, a little harder to read the newspaper, a little shorter on exercise, a little more weight to haul around, a little tougher to see the scale under your tummy. Days, weeks, months all flew by quicker now, the ‘TO DO’ list got longer, and you weren’t as quick checking things off. Perhaps because you didn’t have all the answers now, answers that came so easily and with such conviction in your youth. But then you were right more often now, fewer answers but better ones he supposed, although he wasn’t so sure. And he was now responsible for his family. Katy, twenty years his junior. And their joint creation, Ralphie, only five, a young little man starting to wonder why his dad wasn’t any good at baseball or basketball. Why his dad was so… old. This domestic gig was still relatively new for him. Just five years. He’d mostly been a solitary creature, by happenstance, by nature, living on this plain of crowded humanity: social animals with herd instincts, ready to praise or damn whomever the combined collective deemed worthy or unworthy, whomever ignited and swayed the passions of the day, ready to believe the best or the worst about anybody or anything that captured their popular imagination. He’d been a Judge. Now he was a [...]