There are none so blind as those who will not see.

My second contemporary noir novel is the second in the Lenore Goodman series, a story about crime in a news desert.

Lenore Goodman, a television news reporter in Iowa, rebels against new station management and creates her own digital news channel, struggling to gain access to news stories from the entrenched local political structure. When Clifton, a homeless veteran, takes advantage of an unexpected opportunity, it seems the two are destined to connect. He travels from skid row in Los Angeles through Grand Junction, Amarillo and Oklahoma City looking to put his life together.

Meanwhile, a small group of friends meet weekly to share a meal and outlooks on life in a small Iowa town. A couple of newcomers push the group to expand their horizons, and to ponder the relevance of local news coverage. 

Media staff in Topeka and Oklahoma City run into conflicts with station ownership and absentee management, who demand ever-increasing profits.

In Des Moines, local politicians and their deep-state coterie become nervous about Lenore getting too close to exposing their modus operandi, and she is called on to expand her investigative skills to seek the truth.

Lenore is relentless in her drive to find, uncover and tell the truth about corruption in the small town she adopts. You might think these kinds of deals are endemic only to large cities, but you’d be wrong. It takes a strong, resourceful, determined woman to expose what really happens in those small towns where the officials do pretty much what they want to do.