The Olive Horseshoe

The Olive Horseshoe by Ben F. Small is a mystery that combines his love of the outdoors, his knowledge of the law and of the interesting personalities he must of met in his years as an antitrust attorney.

Small has created Billionaire Denton Wright as the main character. Wright is a man who through hard work, cashing in on an internet business and investment savvy would up being a very rich man. A very rich man who had been estranged from his father for many years.

Wright decides to re-evaluate his life with a kayaking trip in the wilderness to decide how he should go about bridging the rather huge strained gap between him and his father. However, for the first time in his adult life, his timing couldn't be worse. Just as Denton is coming back home, he finds out that his father's mutilated body has washed up on the Spanish Coast.

Learning that his father and a traveling companion were slaughtered by a drug cartel-he decides he must get payback for whoever it is who took the father he barely knew.

The problem arises when he finds out that drug cartels are not necessarily the easiest to track down and they have no problem killing whomever gets in their way-no matter how innocent.

Unbeknownst to him, Denton winds up being the cause of several people's horrendous deaths, in his want to take care of those around him. What he also doesn't learn until the adventure is almost over is just how close his lack of relationship to his father is to the reason he was actually killed.

Some of his co-horts in his quest are Jenna Rogers-a Californian wine-maker whose father was also murdered with Denton's parent. Carlos La Jolla, Jenna's hot-blooded black belt friend and partner, whose eyes give no clue to what he's thinking except a challenge to fight.

Joe Corsano, Denton's father's business partner. A man that, even as a boy, Denton neither liked or trusted.

His good friend, assistant, part-time lover Mandy-who puts her life on the line to help find the murderers.

Along the way, there are some savvy New York city police detectives, an old college friend who is now part of the FBI and some very scary characters.

Of course, there are the required love connections and close calls and of course at the end, we finally find out just the Olive Horseshoe is-which didn't play as big a part in this mystery as you might have suspected.

The Olive Horseshoe is a fast, interesting murder mystery. I don't know if Small is going to franchise the Denton Wright character, but it is an interesting concept.