Missing Bonds

by Bruce W. Most

For Ruby Dark, Denver’s fiery bail bondswoman, it starts as a routine skip. “Bullet Joe” Brown, facing a life sentence as a habitual criminal, jumps bail. Ruby and her idealistic law-student nephew Jason go after him. But their hunt turns deadly when they discover brutally murdered the man who put up collateral for Bullet Joe’s bond. Their hunt takes a stranger twist when a controversial ex-Green Beret colonel shows up claiming that the dead man was living under a false name. He was, in reality, an Air Force officer officially listed as missing in action in 1970 during the Vietnam War. To a perplexed Jason, his aunt becomes obsessed with discovering whether the colonel’s shocking claim is true—and if it is, how the MIA escaped his captors and why he secretly returned to the United States to live under a false identity for over 20 years! Before they can learn the truth, the killer strikes again and again to bury a past our own government and others—including Ruby herself—want buried forever.

326 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 1997

About the author

When not traveling, taking photographs, and playing tennis, Bruce writes mysteries in which the reader gets a fair chance to deduce whodunit before the sleuth does. Not a surprise. He grew up consuming the great whodunit writers such as Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, and his favorite, Raymond Chandler. He read his grandfather’s entire collection of 100 falling-apart paperbacks by Erle Stanley Gardner of Perry Mason fame, a collection he still has, much to his wife’s dismay.

His latest mystery, The Big Dive, was released in 2019. He recently rereleased his award-winning Rope Burn with a new cover https://amzn.to/3u44jym, and will be releasing a new mystery, No Time for Murder, later in 2022. You can read his free crime novella, Harrington's Game, by going to: https://bit.ly/3CqVYIV.

He can be reached at https://www.brucewmost.com/