Brighton Doyle has a Los Angeles-based P.I. business that she’s inherited; an office on funky Venice boardwalk; a glamorous movie-star sister; and a hole in her life where her late fiancé used to be. Her missing persons business is starting to feel stale now that she can do much of her skip-tracing on the computer. Then her life is shaken up when she hauls in a couple of would-be desperadoes on the lam in the Arizona desert. Assuming her involvement with the inept siblings is over, she’s incredulous when their lawyer asks her to find their own kidnap victim who has vanished. All evidence to the contrary, the brothers swear they left Virginia Burgess alive. So where is she? Brighton’s search for the missing woman takes her from behind the false front of Hollywood to the mountain resorts of Southern California, where matters go down-hill fast. By the time she knows the truth, she’s encountered corruption, personal betrayal and murder. To make matters worse, every step of her investigation is dogged by tabloid news reporter, Rick McVee: a complication in more ways than one. From the wonderful opening chapter, with its hilarious bumbling heist artists, to the page-turner of an ending, with everyone chasing the Maguffin back and forth across the mountain communities above the L.A. basin, Hynes’ first detective novel California Natural will keep you glued to the page to find out who did what to whom. --John Shannon, author of The Poison Sky, the third of the Jack Liffey mysteries