Book excerpt: International entrepreneur Pat Culliney flew high as the wealthy owner of Universe Electronics. Then, teen lovers found Pat drowned in his Jaguar coupe, submerged in a lake at the end of a secluded dirt road in the woods. The medical examiner said suicide, but a receipt for dry ice let attorney Shawn O’Donovan realize that Pat was murdered. Just after impoverished Torch Walsh quit his dead-end job to manage a company Pat left him, Pat’s unscrupulous successor began a vicious attempt to steal Torch’s business using a lawsuit, perjury, false arrest of Torch’s mother, extortion, and murder. Shawn fights overwhelming odds to protect Torch and his mother, threatened at every turn. Themes of inequality, corruption, and Shawn’s struggle with alcohol twist into a fast-paced who-and-how-done-it, concluding at the menacing end of the Dirt Road to Death.