Joe Traum, Author of Waking Up

When his 11-year old son is kidnapped and murdered, a downward-spiraling Michael Hayes faces the disintegration of his marriage and the collapse of his booming real estate career. Lack of progress by the police in finding the killer compels Hayes to embark on his own investigation, and he enlists the aid of an Eagle Realty colleague, Soo-Mee Yeong, while secretly seeking help from Joey Cortona, who has ties to the criminal underground. The trail points at Kazuhisa Enomoto, a Japanese mobster who, attempting to launder money, had suffered substantial losses in an Eagle real estate transaction mis-managed by Hayes. Their search leads Hayes and Yeong through the shadow world of drug smuggling and duplicitous real estate deals in America and Japan. Will they find and deliver the killer to justice? Can Hayes regain even a small portion of his former idyllic life? Joe Traum brings memorable characters, colorful locales, and a page-turning plot to this fascinating thriller.