Beach Town: A Story (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798223571339)

A small tourist town on the Oregon Coast, Beach Town is the descendant of the once-thriving logging and fishing industries which have since fallen into decline, giving way to the vagaries of tourism.

The mayor of Beach Town, Jasper Williams, owns the one approachable watering hole in town, The Whaler Bar and Grille. He bought it from the widow Cindy Hawkins for fifteen-thousand dollars and a month's worth of screwing. The Whaler was worth more than a month, Cindy complained after the completion of their agreement, but Jasper's defense against an extension was that he had his wife, Sally Marie, to consider.

Cindy didn't care about Jasper's wife, but Chief of Police Jerome Willis did, he was having an affair with her, which complicated his business relationship with Jasper, who was selling all the weed Chief Willis confiscated. Deputy Thomas "Johnny" Johnson sold all the other drugs the police force acquired, an arrangement which met Chief Willis' approval. He didn't like waste, and drugs unused were a waste to him. Deputy Johnny Johnson had been an altar boy in his youth and had wanted to become a priest, but his service in Vietnam destroyed him. He now stayed drunk and stoned to kill the pain of what he'd done and seen in Vietnam.

Jane Colburn had fled to the Pacific Northwest to escape the drugs and alcohol of San Francisco, but, unfortunately for her, the drugs and alcohol that had led her into prostitution for their profitability eagerly awaited Jane's arrival to Beach Town. An erstwhile suitor of Jane, James "Fishy" Boyd, one of the few remaining crab fishermen on the Oregon Coast, didn't care that Jane had once been a prostitute. A small and wiry man with a university education, his virtual headquarters was The Whaler where Jane found employment.

A new arrival to Beach Town, William Williams was Jasper William's long-lost cousin from England. William had once served in Her Majesty's clandestine services. He wasn't retired as he sometimes said, but, instead, now secretly worked for the United States Government after a bad incident in Hong Kong had brought about his fallout with Her Majesty's men.

An old and broken up, but legendary logger, Harry Hansen, couldn't abide men like William Williams in his town. But then, Harry couldn't abode anyone who wasn't or hadn't been a logger. It was the filter through which he valued all men, if they hadn't endured the rigors and demands of logging he held them in contempt.

A state investigation into the corrupt dealings of the Beach Town Police Department turned Deputy Jordan Coghill state's evidence against Chief Willis. Jasper fled, the specter of his involvement with a seventeen-year-old girl chasing him out of town. The investigators found the men of Beach Town were morally deficient, and the women took advantage of that fact. The investigators concluded the incessant winter rains turned decent people to a life lived questionably.