Deadly Trifecta BY D.C. REED

    When Charles Reynolds, Miami investigative reporter, helps out a former girlfriend straighten out a problem with a city bureaucracy, he unknowingly threatens a plot to attack a strategic military base in Tampa Florida, as well as expose an insiders deal to buy gambling boats in Florida and casinos in Arizona. Charles Reynolds (original character in the novel, The Cleaning) has just finished up an award winning expose on government corruption. He is looking for a little slack time, but a former girlfriend insists that he help her nephew with a licensing problem with the Tampa Bay Port Authority. Charles agrees in part because he hopes to rekindle the romance he once enjoyed.
    When Charles begins asking questions, two groups become interested in Charles' activities, the Chicago Mob and a terrorist cell sponsored by Arab supporters of Al Qaeda. The mob is worried about Charles looking to license rigging and the terrorists are concerned about having their plot exposed. Both groups decide that Charles needs to be eliminated. The story unfolds in Arizona, Ohio, Washington D.C. and Florida revealing illegal payments to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats as well as murder and terrorists plots. In Arizona, Hamish Cain and his Blue Healer are reluctant heroes from New Zealand. Both become colorful characters in Deadly Trifecta, as the plot thickens. Lives threatened, both Cain and Cowboy rise to the occasion to thwart a Mafia hit squad. Chars is able to survive twice being kidnapped, drugged and shot in order to alert authorities just prior to the attack on MacDill Air Force Base.
    Chars is not able to connect the dots with the Arizona connection because in the end he decides that writing the story would endanger the life of a young boy whose mother was shot to cover up a mafia deal for gambling sites in Arizona (Casinos) and Florida (Gambling boats). Just like in "The Cleaning the good guys win, but the good feeling is tempered with some of the bad guys not getting caught.