Pomona Queen

“Kem Nunn writes directly out of the lineage of James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. If there is a contemporary writer with a deeper sense of evil, I don’t know who it would be. Pomona Queen is utterly first-rate” — Jim Harrison

Lost in a southern California barrio, Earl Dean has a hard time believing there is one living soul in this foul-smelling night who wants to be found by a salesman hawking vacuum cleaners. What awaits Earl in the faint glow of a distant porch light is the world of Dan Brown.

Dan Brown’s brother has been killed. Dan has plans to handle the revenge, and Earl has strayed into the crossfire. Dan is the last of the road warriors, a murderous, drug-crazed biker who only thinks of laws as things to break. But more than Buddy Brown lies dead in the moonlight. From a time when the valley was the hub of the nation’s citrus industry to the defoliated sorry mess of today, it has come down to one fact. Earl Dean, broken-hearted vacuum cleaner salesman, owns the last single acre of orange groves in Pomona. And like his great-grandfather before him, he must come forward to claim his inheritance.