To Save the Golden-Cheeked Warbler

Austin, Texas Crime Thriller

By: Philip Beck

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

After barely avoiding becoming a casualty of his boss’s financial fraud at National Airlines and the break-up of his second marriage, Lonny Jones passes on a promotion to Vice President and relocates to Austin, where he’d attended college twenty years ago, to recharge and figure out his future. By chance, he rents a house owned by a politically active couple and is unwittingly drawn into a down-and-dirty mayoral primary election campaign where the powerful, charming and corrupt mayor uses his office to dispense favors to developers. The challenger is an upstart political novice with an eye for his sharp-elbowed, married campaign chairwoman whose cuckold husband is oblivious to their affair. When a mysterious international conglomerate seeks the mayor’s assistance to grease the skids with the city environmental and zoning committees to ensure the approval of a controversial new facility in an environmentally fragile location and a nesting area of the endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler, the mayoral race tightens and the environmental protests mount. Surprisingly, an FBI investigation into the international conglomerate and proposed development is already underway. Suspense builds as the election nears and the conglomerate exerts more pressure to obtain development approvals leading towards an explosive conclusion.