The Tom Hickey California Century novels follow the transformation of a latter day promised land into the prototype of the world's future.

In chronological order:

During the first decade of the 20th century, young Tom Hickey is taken by his unstable mother to a multiracial Pentecostal church. There Frank Gaines becomes his protector. Some years later, when Frank is found hung only yards from Sister Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple, and the Los Angeles police and news media attempt to bury the news of the lynching, Tom commences his first criminal investigation. A gripping mystery with memorable characters, The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles portrays an era and a setting that, perhaps more than any, created the modern world.

By 1942 and The Venus Deal, Tom has discovered he’s the wrong man to remain a Los Angeles policeman. He has moved his wife and daughter south to San Diego and become a private Investigator working for his mentor Leo Weiss. Then Pearl Harbor calls the nation to war. Tom’s attempt to enlist fails on account of his age and a health issue. Soon, with San Diego becoming the largest military installation in the world, business opportunities appear, and Tom needs money as his wife’s frustration about living on a modest income has reached a crisis stage. He becomes as partner in a supper club, and the business thrives, but now his wife’s bitter at the time the club requires. And that’s before the club’s headliner vanishes, and he sets out to find the girl. The search takes him into the realm of spiritualist cults, which by this time are as California as sunshine.

Once the draft becomes less choosy, Tom gets called up. At age 37, he’s in the army and assigned to military police duty on the Tijuana border. A young private enlists his help rescuing his fragile sister who was on her way to visit her brother when a desperado snatched and sold her to Tijuana gang of Mexican and German Nazis. During the rescue, Tom discovers a plot to overthrow the government of Baja California and establish a base for the German invasion of the United States. The Loud Adios is high adventure in which readers experience the danger and exhilaration of California’s war years.

The Angel Gang opens in the Lake Tahoe basin, about which Mark Twain wrote “This is the air the angels breathe.” Tom’s young wife has a baby on the way. He has put PI work aside, and makes a living supervising security at the casino owned by an associate of Bugsy Siegal, Mickey Cohen, and others who run the LA rackets and are creating modern Las Vegas. When an old friend appeals for his help clearing her of an arson murder charge, he declines until his wife urges him to go. He races south, intending to return in a day or two. But in San Diego, he discovers the arsonist might belong to the Mickey Cohen mob. In haste to go home, he uses less tact than is prudent. Then his wife disappears.

The Do-Re-Mi captures the tragic end of the era we call the ‘60s. In 1972, Evergreen, California is a different town than the last time Tom’s son Clifford visited, only a year ago. Then it was a peaceful garden of delights. Now it's the site of a range war. Outlaw bikers have come to poach the hippies' marijuana. The very night Clifford arrives a hometown boy gets murdered. Clifford and his brother Alvaro are scheduled to perform at the Evergreen folk festival, but when sheriffs crash the brothers' reunion at a camp amongst the redwoods, Alvaro runs. To clear his brother of a murder charge, Clifford may need his father, but Tom is busy trying keep his wife from returning to the sanitarium.

In 1979, a Holy Virgin or convincing fraud appears in Mexico and dedicates herself to the overthrow of the corrupt ruling party. And a woman who claims to be the Virgin’s sister brings San Diego law student and private investigator Alvaro Hickey a chance to help reform the country of his birth. The Vagabond Virgins is a tale of love, vengeance, and adventure on both sides of California’s artificial border.

Read about Women, Spirit, and Family in the Tom Hickey California Century novels, a resource for book clubs and other highbrow readers.