WHERE DEAD MEN LOSE THEIR BONES
WGA 2288202
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The kidnapping of a girl leads a private investigator on a mission of revenge against a backwoods cartel manufacturing a new designer drug, but revenge comes with a personal price when she is captured and forced to work for them and must face her own addictions and recklessness.
Where Dead Men Lose Their Bones is a gritty, neo-noir crime thriller that follows
Dominique "Nica" Chery, a former New Orleans cop turned private investigator. The story begins with Nica on a surveillance job that quickly escalates into a dangerous pursuit involving a kidnapped child. As Nica delves deeper into the investigation, she uncovers the Dead Men drug cartel operation led by the ruthless Nestor, which produces and markets an ultra strong hybrid cocaine.
When a young man that Nica once mentored turns up dead due to the cartel, Nica goes on a deadly rampage at one of their depots. In the fierce gunfight, she is wounded in the shoulder, but she gathers enough intel to tie the missing girl to a prime operator in the organization.
Themes of abandonment and addiction become apparent as Nica battles her own demons while trying to rescue Emily, the young girl caught in the crossfire. Nica, like Emily, was left to foster care as a child, and the loss that created still affects her life as she tries to fill the void with drugs and alcohol and a flare for violent remedies, behavior that cost her a career in law enforcement and more recently, being fired as a process server. But she still has contacts within the police force, and an on-again, off-again relationship with Mark Crenshaw, a detective. He'd love to take their romance to the next level, but the instability of Nica's life is a deterrent.
The narrative takes a dark turn when Nica is captured and forced to work in the cartel's backcountry drug processing facility. As a black lady living in the deep south, being made a slave to produce that which she is addicted to is rock bottom. But Emily's father, who kidnapped her away from legal custody, has brought her to the compound to perform menial tasks. That's enough to spark Nica out of a narcotic stupor and back into action. She escapes and kills her pursuers. Then a crucial decision--she goes back to free Emily. The operation has closed down and Nestor and his henchmen are gone.
Nica learns of a nearby airfield and gets there just in time to stop the escaping plane. The final confrontation between Nica and Nestor is tense and yet oddly poignant, because he was abandoned as a child and left to sink or swim in an adult world, just like her.
In the end, Nica has an opportunity to temporarily adopt Emily, which provides the anchor that Nica so badly needs.
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