"April 1891, as the dusty frontier city of San Diego recovers from a collapsing real estate bubble, residents look forward to the arrival of Benjamin Harrison, the first US president to visit their city. Little do they suspect that some of their citizens are planning an attack on the president and his train.
Fourteen-year-old Johnny Cong, an enterprising orphan of mixed parentage, lives in the Stingaree district of the city, a degenerate slum where he ekes out a living driving a donkey cart. Johnny believes in the American Dream, but when a mysterious Norwegian named John Sigerson hires him as a guide, he must navigate a dangerous path between loyalty and treason.
Equal parts spy thriller, western, coming-of-age story, and Sherlockian intrigue, The Deadly Stingaree tells the remarkable story of this young man and his notable friends—a notorious gunslinger, a former Buffalo soldier, a crusading female attorney, and the world’s greatest detective—who saved the president and the union that day.
Is it fact, fiction, or some devious combination of both?"
"1. In the sleepy seaside town of La Jolla, CA, rookie cop Jake Stirling saves the life of infamous crime writer Raymond Chandler, earning the respect of his hard-nosed captain, Wade Lennox, who served with Jake’s father, a police detective whose suicide two years earlier shocked the town and shattered Jake's family. Jake gets called to the Hotel Del Charro, a luxury hideaway for the rich and famous. Budding starlet Zsa Zsa Gabor’s diamond necklace has been stolen. She and other hotel guests—FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, political wheeler-dealer Artie Corcoran, and mob boss Meyer Lansky press their own cryptic agendas, while Raymond Chandler provokes outrage with drunken allegations of police corruption. When a local hoodlum is murdered Captain Lennox takes Jake into his confidence, demanding loyalty. More killings follow as Jake finds himself caught up in a conspiracy that could change the course of American history. Can he clear his father's name and save those he loves from the cold-blooded brutality of desperate and powerful men?"
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