When Key West bar owner and disillusioned attorney Jack Girard awakes to a beautiful, naked bar patron and a ringing phone, he doesn’t expect to hear that his mother, Betty, is dead. However, that’s the message his estranged father, Duke, bears, along with a demand that Jack show up at his home, the one Betty declined to occupy after he tore down the original one.

Although it’s clear from her note that Betty committed suicide, Duke insists that the death of his estranged wife is the handiwork of drug baron Julio Guzman, with whom Betty had been having an affair. He’s intent that her death be publicly blamed on Guzman, claiming that suicide would destroy his reputation as a hotshot litigator — just as he’d maintained when Jack’s brother, Bobby, committed suicide a decade before. However, as Jack studies the note his mother left behind, he realizes that Betty has passed along the reasons for her death, which are directly related to Bobby’s.

James Polkinghorn has written a fast-paced thriller of a man coming to terms with his family and life. Don’t let its brevity fool you; Liquid Shades of Blue is a deep journey into an active conscience.