Blackmail, murder, and a pretty girl on the run

Nevada's attorney general is missing. At dusk on a deserted Nevada highway in a thunderstorm, ex-IRS agent and PI-in-training Mortimer Angel comes across a pretty, scantily-clad girl--Harper Leland. She's cold and alone, thirty miles from the nearest town.

When Mort offers her a ride, she orders him out of his truck at gunpoint. She tries to take off, but he cuts the valve stem on the rear tire. Realizing she's in trouble, he wants to help--but with no spare tire, he devises a creative way to get them out of the hills--slowly, precariously balanced on three tires. On their way down, a rough-looking man stops and asks Mort if he has "seen anyone up in the hills." Mort realizes the guy is after Harper, who is hiding in the truck.

Thus begins a cat-and-mouse chase in northeast Nevada that continues even after Mort finds the attorney general--Harper's mother--dead in the trunk of a car. In time, Mort's wife, Lucy, is also pulled into the case, which becomes the deadliest of Mort's career.

The perfect mix of John Sanford, Randy Wayne White, and Carl Hiaasen

While all of the novels in the Mortimer Angel Gumshoe Series stand on their own and can be read in any order, the publication sequence is:

Gumshoe
Gumshoe for Two
Gumshoe on the Loose
Gumshoe Rock
Gumshoe in the Dark