Oceano Beach Bedlam
(A Thad Hanlon/Bri de la Guerra Mystery)
by Topper Jones
About Oceano Beach Bedlam
Oceano Beach Bedlam (A Thad Hanlon/Bri de la Guerra Mystery)
Mystery/Detective Fiction
2nd in Series
Setting - Five Cities area of the California
Central Coast near Pismo Beach.
Publisher : Wild Rose Press
(March 17, 2025)
Paperback : 398 pages
ISBN-10 : 1509260218
ISBN-13 : 978-1509260218
Digital ASIN : B0DSG8YN11
Hanlon & de la Guerra have gone full service. In this second book in the surfing crime-fighter mystery series, Thad Hanlon and his martial-arts-obsessed partner, Bri de la Guerra, hang out their shingle as newly licensed private investigators. Now in addition to fraud-busting, the two detectives do it all. Background checks. Surveillance. Even finding lost souls. Just about anything that requires sleuthing or going undercover.
All they need is a client.
That’s when a former exotic dancer from Bakersfield CA shows up looking for her surf prodigy son who’s gone missing in the wake of cult violence terrorizing the California Central Coast.
ExcerptInside the beach groomer hopper, atop the wire mesh conveyor belt used to sift sand and trap debris, were more body parts, bloated and reeking of decomposition. Lookedto be the body of an older teen. The tattoo on the youth’s neck gave me pause.
“You recognize him, don’t you?” Bri, my detecting agency partner, asked.
I did.
I had seen the young man a day ago outside Surf’s Up Donuts, the local hangout for post-surf session nutrition. He was in handcuffs with a couple of his BVL 13 homies. Pismo Beach PD had rousted the Bakersfield Varrio Locos 13 gang members in a weapons search and had not come up empty. NeckTat didn’t look happy then. Someone had made sure he would not look happy ever again.
The crowd of gawkers surrounding the tractor retreated somewhat—inches instead of feet—as State Park Ranger Cody Bolton pulled up in his patrol vehicle. He left his SUV siren screaming, hopped out of the 4x4, and handed me a roll of yellow police tape.
“Hanlon,” he said, “help me secure the crime scene.” From the cargo hold of his sport utility, he took a stack of orange traffic cones and ringed the tractor and the sand equipment. I stretched the barricade tape around the cones to form an oblong perimeter.
My surf buddy, Ranger Cody, took the DO NOT CROSS tape from me and tossed it into the back of his SUV. “Now we wait for Five Cities Forensics.” He killed the siren but left his patrol lights flashing.
The forensic team did their thing. The investigators took a lot of photos of the victim’s body, especially the ear-to-ear cut to the gang member’s neck, just above his BVL 13 tattoo.
As the techs put away their gear, Ranger Cody instructed me to head over to the Five Cities Sheriff’s South Station off Cabrillo Highway in Oceano to give a formal statement.
Detective Naiya Ygnacio was waiting for me at the Station House entrance. She ushered me into the interview room, directed me to sit, and queued the audio by verbally confirming the date, time, location, and persons present. “Hanlon,” she continued, “for the record, state your full name and profession.”
“Come on, Naiya. Is this necessary?”
The detective shoved the digital recorder across the interrogation room table. A red LED glowed. “Talk,” she said.
“Thaddeus Jude Hanlon, Private Investigator. My clients refer to me as the patron saint of lost causes.”
“Cut the crap, Hanlon. You don’t have any clients. And for the record, no one in Five Cities thinks you’re funny.”
“Zael thinks I’m funny.”
“Three-year-olds don’t count.”
I wasn’t feeling the respect fellow crime fighterswarrant. But then, again, Naiya was being bleakly honest. I really didn’t have any clients. And nothing in the development pipeline.
About Topper Jones
I’m Topper Jones and I pen the Hanlon & de la Guerra Mystery Series, featuring surfing crime-fighter Thaddeus Hanlon and his martial-arts-obsessed partner, Bri de la Guerra. The first book, All That Glisters, came out September 2023, and the second, Oceano Beach Bedlam, hit shelves on St. Patrick’s Day—March 17, 2025. Book three is near completion.
Before diving into full-time writing, I worked in public accounting and consulting, and as a university professor teaching financial reporting, software development, and business communication. I’m a member of International Thriller Writers, an affiliate member of the Mystery Writers of America, and serve on the board of the Write On—St. George chapter of the League of Utah writers.
To be close to family, I make my home in the southwestern desert rather than my native California, but when the surf’s up, I’ll head to the Pacific to get in a little “water therapy” and catch a few waves.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW - TOPPER JONES
1.
When
did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
In High School. I’m sitting on the bench waiting for the JV baseball
coach to put me in to play second base. One of my teammates hands me the school
newspaper. He’s pointing his stubby finger at a poem on the page.
“What’s this, Jones?” He presses his lips to the back of his
hands. Makes a kissing sound. And then in a swoon-worthy voice, he starts to
read: “Love grows, so too we. This passion—”
I grab the paper from him. I’m gonna kill Seevy. In Study Hall,
she asked to look at what I was working on, something personal. And now...now
it was in print? Without my permission?
But that byline. Oh, that byline. Seeing my name on something I
had written was a total rush! I was hooked. So instead of dispatching Seevy, I thanked
her for giving me my first pub.
2.
How
long does it take you to write a book?
Now that I have a few novels under my belt, my average time to
draft, workshop, and revise a book is about one year. My writing group members
keep telling me I need to write faster, but with 20 grandkids and 4 great-grandkids
between my wife and me, we’re on the road a lot for sports events, choir and
orchestra concerts, play performances, and birthdays. I love to write, but
first priorities, first.
3.
What
is your work schedule like when you're writing?
My calendar has a daily entry “Write Now” set for a three-hour
block from 9 a.m.-12 noon. Oh, oh, oh...if only I were that disciplined. The
calendar event acts more as an inspiration to remember to get words on the page
each day. That’s my goal. And I do keep track using the Active Daily Word Count
Calculator spreadsheet from author Jessica Brody’s course “Writing Mastery:
Productivity Hacks for Writers.”
4.
What
would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
My workspace: A quiet place with a relatively clear desk, a
high-speed computer with two high-resolution monitors and an ergo keyboard and
chair, a desktop fountain burbling, soft instrumental music playing in the
background, and a storyboard on the wall plastered with scene cards from all
three acts of the novel I’m working on, and a window with a view.
5.
How
do books get published?
There’s a little magic to it and a healthy dose of hope. You
write, and write, and revise, and query until you find just the right agent or
publisher, and then you hand off your manuscript and hope the magic happens one
more time.
6.
Where
do you get your information or ideas for your books?
The inspiration for each of my books has been a little different.
For OCEANO BEACH BEDLAM, the idea came from a visit, a few years ago, to my
younger brother in the Pismo Beach area. He took me for a drive along the shore
of Oceano Beach—the only beach in California that allows driving on the sand.
While there, we watched as the early morning beach personnel groomed the
shoreline, driving tractors with sand rakes to and fro to clean up debris and
litter from the day before. Mystery writer that I am, I asked myself a “What if?”
What if one of the beach groomers drags up a dismembered body?
What then? And before I knew it, I had the murder premise for OCEANO BEACH
BEDLAM. Every good mystery starts with a “body drop.” Now I had mine.
7.
When
did you write your first book and how old were you?
ALL THAT GLISTERS was 45 years in the making. I got the initial
idea for the bookwhen I was 27 after reading Robin Cook’s medical thriller “Coma.”
I thought: If a physician can write a bestseller, why can’t a certified public
accountant? We were both professionals. All I needed was a preposterous
premise.
Rather than have my protagonist discover [Spoiler Alert] human
organs being illegally harvested for the black market as in Coma, I decided to
have my main characters discover “something” equally chilling regarding the
financial markets—a disturbing “something” that would upend everything. Total
economic meltdown and the consequences! Banks failing, riots in the streets,
and breadlines stretching from coast to coast.
A few years later, when I was 32 working as a strategy consultant
at Bain & Company, I penned the first draft of ALL THAT GLISTERS on my
morning commute into downtown Boston. Fortunately, that draft never found a
home. The writing was amateurish and unschooled. So, I took classes in creative
writing and kept plugging away at craft.
When I retired from my day job 35 years later, I pulled out my
abandoned proverbial “novel in the drawer” and with the help of a developmental
editor specializing in mysteries, I rewrote the thing from scratch. All except
the preposterous premise. By then, I was 67.
8.
What
do you like to do when you're not writing?
Surfing, jogging, traveling, seeing stage productions (especially
musicals), screening (and analyzing) films with my wife, and of course,
reading.
9.
What
does your family think of your writing?
My dad always encouraged it. He read the first draft of ALL THAT
GLISTERS,which I ended up shelving. Every time I’d visit, he’d ask how the
abandoned “proverbial novel in the drawer” was coming.Unfortunately, he didn’t
live long enough to read the final revision. He was an avid mystery reader and
loved Robert Ludlum thrillers. I’m pretty sure he’d be pleased by how I
incorporated his suggested changes in the final version.
10.
What
was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
I’m a big fan of the late Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!® approach
to story structure, so I tend to “beat out” the major plot points in my novels,
complete with scene cards. Each card has a short scene description identifying
the Hero/Heroine, Goal, Obstacles, and Stakes, along with notes on the
emotional change from scene opening to scene close.
As I write the scene, sometimes magic happens and the “players”
don’t behave as I expect. So, I end up channeling the characters, leading to
surprises I never would have imagined during the outline phase of the project.
11.
How
many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
I’ve written two murder mysteries and am almost done with the
third. In addition to fiction, I’ve coauthored four textbooks under my given
name: Christopher G. Jones. My favorite novel is OCEANO BEACH BEDLAM. The
plotting is tighter. The writing better. And the detective duo’s moral code is
more important than ever—“Everyone matters or no one does. There’s no in-between.”
12.
Do
you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are
they?
“Workshop your work!” Whatever it takes, get feedback from people
who are interested in your success. And be open to what fellow writers have to
say. They can tell when something isn’t working, when characters behave out of
character, and when your language isn’t capturing your intention. Listen and
revise accordingly.
13.
Do
you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?
Most of what I hear comes from readers who leave reviews on
Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, and Book Bub. They tend to like the fast pace of my
books, the twists and turns in the action, and the humorous interplay between
the detective duo of Thad Hanlon and Bri de la Guerra. Many tend to ask when
the next book in the series will be released.
14.
Do
you like to create books for adults?
Though I have published a children’s story and poetry for young
adults, my primary audience is adults. Everyone loves a good whodunnit.
15.
What
do you think makes a good story?
Anything that keeps me turning the page, usually involving a
story-worthy protagonist pursuing a goal that makes a difference while facing
overwhelming obstacles.
16.
As
a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
Be a reporter. At thirteen, I bought my first typewriter with
money from my paper route. Along the way, I detoured into a career
inaccounting, specializing in financial reporting, but seventeen years later, I
had the great good fortune to write human interest stories and a financial
column for the university newspaper where I earned my MBA.
17.
What
would you like my readers to know?
You are the lifeblood of publishing. Thank you for keeping the passion
for reading alive.
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