Common Ground

When newly-married young private detective Kayman Karl and husband Raam Commoner agree to sell her P.I. firm to a sleazy competitor, they never expect the deal to open a Pandora’s Box and unleash a lethal storm of murder-for-hire, murder-for-profit, and murder-for-the-fun-of-it.

When smart young private investigator Kayman Karl reluctantly agrees to sell her P.I. firm to a sleazy competitor, neither she nor new husband Raam Commoner have any idea the decision will plunge them into a desperate search for a manuscript that could expose the lethal operations of an underworld employment agency — a hiring hall for hitmen. Clues left by the manuscript’s elusive author lead Raam and Kayman from Beverly Hills to San Miguel de Allende and back to Los Angeles where they find themselves caught in a crossfire between the cold-blooded operator who hunts for the manuscript to keep himself out of the gas chamber, and the obsessed movie producer who sees the screenplay as a ticket to the Oscars — all the while trying to stay out of the way of a homicidal psychopath who wants to do them a favor and a government agent on a national security mission. Raam and Kayman are on a mission of their own — they want a honeymoon. But first things first, and as the bodies pile up the newlyweds will need a common ground from which to protect the manuscript and stay ahead of a determined killer.

Richard David Bach was born in New York City and grew up on the south shore of Long Island. He acquired a Civil Engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where it was claimed that the mechanical and nuclear engineers designed weapons while his fellow civil engineers built targets. ROTC at RPI led to a commission in the Air Force and two years on active duty overseeing design and construction of anti-missile radar sites in the Arctic, after which he accidentally migrated to Portland, Oregon where he studied law at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College. With law school and the bar exam behind him, he joined Stoel Rives, LLP, one of Portland’s most prestigious law firms, where he founded and chaired the firm’s Environmental Law Practice Group — practicing environmental law until he retired to take up writing. Richard David Bach lives and writes near Portland where he dotes upon his wife (always his first reader), four children, nine grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.