If you’re gonna box an octopus, best bring some extra arms.
At the height of tourist season, an armored car drives off a crowded pier and sinks to the bottom of San Francisco Bay. By the time divers find the wreck, the cash is gone and the driver has vanished. The police are convinced it’s an inside job, but local merchant Vera Young, whose boyfriend drove the armored car, claims it was much more than a simple heist.
Vera swears the missing driver is innocent and wants him found before the police can throw him in jail. Private investigator Cape Weathers reluctantly takes the case but warns Vera that her boyfriend is likely guilty-or dead. What starts as a manhunt uncovers a criminal conspiracy of money laundering, illegal drug testing, and a network of corporations willing to do anything to protect their stock price. It’s a case that Cape can’t get his arms around, and his relationship with Vera is getting complicated while the list of people who want him dead is getting longer.
Boxing The Octopus is a runaway tour of San Francisco’s underworld which reminds us that when things get out of hand, having eight arms is always better than two.
Tim Maleeny is the award-winning author of Greasing the Piñata. His short fiction won the 2007 Macavity Award and appears in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Death Do Us Part, an anthology edited by Harlan Coben. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, he currently lives in San Francisco.
Armando Duran has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the repertory acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.