The Long Fall

On Santa Catalina Island, a winter tourist discovers the scattered bones of two bodies on an almost-vertical mountainside, high above the town of Avalon. He contacts the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Sergeant Paul Saldano, the island's watch commander, investigates. How did the bones get there? Was it an accident? A double lovers' leap? Or maybe murder? The discovery of a neat bullet hole in one of the bodies' breastplate kicks Saldano's investigation into high gear. The County Corner estimates that the bones have lain on that mountainside since World War II. The recovery of a set of Army dog tags nearby takes our story back in time to the war years when civilian traffic to Catalina was cut off and the island occupied by the US military.

Sgt. Saldano enlists the help of Specialist Barbara Spencer, an Army records clerk in San Francisco. They become partners in trying to solve this eighty-year old mystery. Who were these people? Why did they die? Why are there no records of anything? Romance blossoms between the two investigators. And as we flash back to life on Catalina Island during WWII, we see love, fear, and jealousy are alive and well on this American outpost.

The Long Fall is a cold case mystery filled with historical intrigue and the clash of cultures. Its story twists and turns as much as the narrow road that climbs the mountain above Avalon, on Santa Catalina, the Island of Romance.