By Accident may be my last police procedural crime novel set in Southern California. Moving back home to Canada, specifically Ottawa, Ontario, I can’t hear the shush of the ocean waves on Santa Monica Beach any longer, or the buzz of traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, or the crowds on the Pier.
Years ago a small group of women in the Grapevine area of the Southern San Joaquin Valley gathered to see what they could do about the huge number of unwanted cats and dogs. Few resources existed. We were 65 miles far away from the Kern County seat, farther even from Ventura County, and beyond the curve of the earth from LA County.
Luke Mouradian arrived in Beijing late Saturday night in March of 1988, numbed with the fatigue of a twenty hour flight. Leaving the airport he found himself suddenly illiterate when the few signs in English disappeared and everything became Chinese. The bus made its way through choked traffic to the conference hotel past new apartment blocks, towers, hotels and office buildings. All he knew about The People's Republic was that everything was shifting and changing.
