Graves Point (Northwest Noir Book 1)

A Long-Buried Secret Resurfaces in a Town That Never Forgets

Graves Point, a fog-wrapped coastal village weighed down by silence, has kept its secrets for decades. But when Jackson “Sonny” Malloy returns home, drawn by the mysterious death of his childhood girlfriend Dinah Bible, the past begins to stir. What was once dismissed as a tragic accident now reveals cracks—and Sonny is determined to find out what really happened.

Haunted by guilt and pursued by a hired gun with ties to a political scandal, Sonny must navigate a town unwilling to confront its own truth. As memories resurface and alliances fracture, he finds himself entangled in a web of lies spun to protect the guilty. The deeper he digs, the more dangerous the search becomes.

Discover Graves Point, the first novel in Tom Towslee’s Northwest Noir series—a gripping, atmospheric mystery of long shadows, coastal gloom, and small-town secrets. Available now wherever books are sold.

Excerpt from the book

All Jackson “Sonny” Malloy knew was that little had changed about Graves Point other than the color of the sky. It was cobalt blue when he left on a late summer day and steel-wool gray when he returned in mid-November twenty-three years later. A few hundred weather-beaten cottages with cedar-shake roofs and clapboard siding still clung to the steep hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Ancient dwarf beach pines, bent and twisted by endless winter storms, hung tough along the narrow, sidewalk-less residential streets. Sagging fish nets decorated with dried starfish and Japanese glass floats covered bleached-out split-rail fences surrounding small yards. Crab pots stacked against carports. Small boats with outboard motors parked in gravel driveways. Wind chimes jingled in a chilly wind that whisked away chimney smoke from cozy fireplaces.

The air was heavy with the smell of salt and burnt wood. To the west, the dark clouds that scudded across the horizon promised rain and more rain. The biggest change was the oversized vacation homes with massive wood decks and plate-glass windows nestled in the stand of old Douglas firs above town. The houses were dark, waiting for spring when the owners would return to drink Oregon pinots and local IPAs while watching the sunset and giggling about why the locals endured the rain-sodden winters.

But it was November.

The homes seemed content to loom menacingly over the small cottages that gave Graves Point its quaint and enduring seaside ambiance. Looking at the little houses, Malloy started ticking off names of the families that lived there, or at least used to: Windsor, Arnold, Ludwig, Busch, Talbot, Rolfson, D’Amico, Weber, Ambrose and, of course, Bible.

Definitely the Bibles.

Malloy left Graves Point as a teenager, off to college with little more than a suitcase full of clothes and a head full of anxieties. He was back with a different suitcase, one filled with a few changes of clothes, a shaving kit, a newspaper clipping, and twenty thousand dollars in cash. Tucked under the driver’s seat was a Beretta 92 handgun with a fifteen-round clip.

The newspaper clipping was about someone he last saw on a late summer day twenty-three years earlier. The Beretta was a security blanket left over from his days as an Army Ranger. The clipping and the memories were what gave Malloy the idea of coming back to Graves Point. It was the perfect place to hide while waiting for the square-jawed men wearing cheap suits and carrying subpoenas to arrive. A place with no monuments to dead presidents or granite buildings named for forgotten members of Congress. There were no museums, art galleries, or tour buses. No lobbyists, reporters, spinmeisters, stonewallers, or liars. No senators, representatives, or staffers out to change the world. No security guards who think everyone is a terrorist. No reporters who believe anyone elected to office is a crook. Most important, there were no federal grand juries.

There was only the image of a young girl burned into his brain twenty-three years ago. An image that haunted him, urged him on, and never let him forget what happened that late summer day so long ago.

He could make up a lot of reasons for coming back to Graves Point, but in the back of his mind she was the one that really mattered.