Ritual of the Savage

It's the long, hot summer of 1958. Johnny Davis - a struggling private eye with a taste for sharp suits, bottle blondes, and Zombie cocktails at the Luau - is nursing a hangover and a fresh set of bruises when his ex-wife Vicki walks back into his life. Her kid brother Eddie, a brilliant young chemist at Star Crest Chemicals, has vanished. Someone tried to kill him. Now he's hiding in the desert, terrified, and he'll only talk to Johnny.

What starts as a routine missing person case drags Johnny out of his comfort zone into a nightmare world of mind-altering drugs, industrial espionage, and murder - with pit stops at some very well-stocked tiki bars. A corpse on the carpet. A security chief frozen in terror. A signed letter to a mysterious woman named Justine. And a single flask containing a formula so dangerous that Eddie himself wants it destroyed, but others will kill to possess it.

From the cocktail lounges and beatnik clubs of Sunset Strip to the manicured lawns of Palm Springs and the tiki bars of Honolulu, Johnny follows a trail of classified documents, Chinese spies, and a drug that opens the "doors of perception" - whether you're ready or not. Along the way, he must navigate his own weaknesses: his lingering love for Vicki, his growing obsession with the enigmatic Justine, and the violent legacy of the war he's never quite left behind.

Ritual of the Savage is hardboiled noir with a tropical twist - a sun-bleached pulp thriller steeped in 1950s Americana, exotica music, and the dark, sweaty underbelly of the American Dream. Pull up a stool. Order a Zombie. Just watch your back.