Westgate: A Nick Marino Mystery
by Matt Orlando
Synopsis
After being put on indefinite unpaid leave for beating up a criminal, surfer and cop, Nick Marino, takes a job as a night security guard in the Uber-rich neighborhood of Westgate in Orange County, California.Price: $3.99 USD
Genre: Mystery | Comedy | Suspense
Author: Matt Orlando
Language: English
File Size: 711 KB
Print Length: 281 pages
Publication Date: August 14, 2020
ASIN: B08FZ1YCMX
ISBN: 9781393671961
Sold by: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Rakuten, SCRIBD, Angus & Robertson, and Vivlio.
Summary
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Nick Marino used to be a cop. And still was. Sort of.
After being put on indefinite unpaid leave for beating up a child molester he caught abducting a child, Nick takes a job as a Security Guard in the rich neighborhood of Westgate.
True to form, Nick sleeps with one of the local housewives, and after the third time, finds her hanging in her kitchen. Nick was not a great Cop and a worse Detective, but he has a strong suspicion that this was not a suicide.
With the help of his two older out of shape Wannabe Cop Security Guard coworkers, Nick navigates the dangerous world of the outrageously rich and powerful residents of Westgate, whose sexual proclivities challenge even Nick's ideas about deviance.
And he's seen some crazy sh*t on the job!
Sky, the unrelenting Lolita daughter of an abusive father, holds some key to finding the killer of Nick’s three-night stand…and the secret life behind the closed curtains of Westgate. If Nick doesn’t watch his step, he may never be a cop again.
Or breathe again for that matter.
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Sex
It's a touchy subject. You write a book with sex as a huge part of the plot and you're going to turn some people off. Or on. I wasn't really trying to do either. I was just being honest with something that is extraordinarily polarizing.
Sex isn't one thing. It's many. It's love. Hate. Submission. Power. Energy. Beauty. Ugly. Connecting. Repelling. Soft. Hard. Animal. Spiritual. Fulfilling. Surf. Diminishing. Lustful. Jealous. Needy.
It's a weapon. A gift. And so many other things, that one could just make their fingers bleed writing what it is. And what it is, is different to all of us.
It is force on the world is as strong a pull as is money. Which is probably tied with sex anyhow and has about as many nuances...
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"Nick wasn't pleased to see Phil. He never really was. Phil was a pain in the ass. Always listening to Tony Robbins audiobooks and quoting Jim Rohn. Always trying to pump everyone up to be better and do more. Guy was the opposite of a parasite. Whatever that was. Like a help-a-site. They were both equally terrible to be around.
Phil had the audacity to come in and act like he didn't know Nick was suspended without pay. He was that guy.
He was, "... just in the neighborhood."
He didn't even start talking until he had taken a long gander throughout Nick's tiny studio apartment with a pitying look on his face.
Nick was sitting on his futon sofa bed. Still wearing the Hawaiian print shirt he was drunk in the night before. And pink boxer briefs that had come in the pack of five different colors. He hadn't seen the pink ones in the box, and had forgotten to throw them away.
Nick was hungover.
"How you uh -- how you doin, man?" Phil asked in his best, trying to not seem concerned tone."
"Hungover."
"Rough night?"
"I don't remember."
Then Phil went right into it. He always asked caring questions before he asked for what he wanted. "Hey, I got an opening if you need some extra cash. I know you're doing good with the police force and all. But I got this account at Pelican Bluffs in Newport Beach. Piece of cake. Quiet. Rich. Mostly just sitting in a car all night. But, hey, maybe a little quiet would do you some good! Ha! Am I right?"
Nick stared up at him with bloodshot eyes, a bit of hate, and through the lenses of what looked to Nick like scratched up and foggy glasses that he wanted to wipe off, but it turned out they were just his eyes.
Before Phil could open his mouth again, and he was going to, Nick said, "fine."
Reviews
quotes by Matt Orlando
“Nick heard the glass set down on a hard surface. His inclination was to turn. To watch. But there was something in the manners of it all. Like he was bound by tradition. He couldn’t turn to the man who’s wife he was fucking that he found dead days later. Nick wondered if the guy could have done it. Slipped into the property and hung her.”
“Two weeks. He’d only been here two weeks. Five weeks ago, he was a cop. Now he was staring at the manicured toes of a pretty decent looking cougar as they swayed back and forth three feet off the ground. She was wearing that light blue silk robe. Maybe it was silk. He didn’t really have a clue. But she had looked good in it.”
“Thankfully, her hair covered her face. He didn’t want to see it. He’d liked her. For all her rich cougar cliche’, she was funny. Forward. She was like a rock n’ roll teenager.”
“Nick wasn’t used to dealing with rich powerful men. There weren’t many in Santa Ana. There were some. Every town had them. He’d just never had to deal with them. He didn’t like dealing with this one. He’d had power in money. Evidenced in the will it took build some sort of empire and have a house like this. Nick was a barely graduated high school cop that was really just a cop so that he could surf and drink on his days off.”