Book excerpt: The Fixer's Mess Max Cedar is the personal lawyer, aka “fixer,” for the bombastic and crude hotel mogul Duncan Thomas of San Francisco. Since working for Duncan, he has become estranged from his family in New York and lately is convinced he is on the verge of having a stroke. When Duncan orders Max to “fix” a newspaper story about an alleged affair between Duncan and a stripper named London, things begin to unravel. Max gets caught up in a murder scheme and is forced to go on the run. As he tries to get himself out from under this mess, he must take on Duncan’s close circle of creepy employees, family, and disturbing secrets. Now Max must use his skills and unethical tactics as Duncan’s fixer to maneuver himself out of prison while remaining in one piece. Will Max be able to fix his very own mess? ==== The Case On A Cliff Jacob is a nearly broke Bay Area private investigator who has not had a case for a considerable amount of time. One day a woman enters his office to find her missing brother, Tony Cliff. Jacob tracks Tony to LITTER, a Silicon Valley tech company. There he finds out that Tony may or may not be selling methamphetamine to the LITTER programmers. Jacob enlists his friend Tommy to help find Tony. They have a troubled relationship due to an incident when they were in high school where Tommy believed Jacob turned on him. Everything is not what it seems as Jacob gets in over his head—including a bare knuckle fight with a cat, shady cops, a crazy night in Las Vegas—and he is left dangling as he tries to solve The Case on a Cliff.