Local author Terry Sanville recently added another book to his oeuvre. Cold case mystery The Long Fall begins when a tourist discovers the skeletal remains of two people on a steep mountainside overlooking Avalon, on Catalina Island, sending the island’s watch commander, Sgt. Paul Saldano, in search of answers.
“How did the bones get there?” the book’s synopsis asks. “Was it an accident? A double lovers’ leap? Or maybe murder? The discovery of a neat bullet hole in one of the bodies’ breastplate kicks Saldano’s investigation into high gear. The county coroner estimates that the bones have lain on that mountainside since World War II. The recovery of a set of Army dog tags nearby takes our story back in time to the war years when civilian traffic to Catalina was cut off and the island occupied by the U.S. military.
“Sgt. Saldano enlists the help of specialist Barbara Spencer, an Army records clerk in San Francisco. They become partners in trying to solve this 80-year-old mystery. Who were these people? Why did they die? Why are there no records of anything? Romance blossoms between the two investigators. And as we flash back to life on Catalina Island during World War II, we see love, fear, and jealousy are alive and well on this American outpost.”
Sanville, an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist, is a SLO Town fixture who can often be seen taking long walks. As his bio notes, he lives with “his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics).” He’s written more than 300 short stories and two previous novels, Face-to-Face (2020) and The Misplaced (2024).
His books are available for purchase on amazon.com. Δ
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.