Things can't get any worse for investigative journalist Joshua (Josh) Bayne. His wife, Louise, has thrown him out to make room for her tennis-pro boyfriend. Then Josh's girlfriend, Nina Lloyd, turns up dead in the Seal Beach, California, building where he lives. And the cops? Well, it doesn't help things when you give them a bogus alibi. Now, Josh-still semi-famous for uncovering the Orange County bankruptcy mess in the 1990s-must use all of his formidable journalistic skills to break the biggest story of his career. What he finds could blow the whistle on a sinister foreign-antiquities ring; its connections to a resurgent neo-Nazi group operating in Orange County; a recent string of savage murders; and a terrorist plot too terrible to imagine. But only if he can elude the police and live long enough to write the story. An offbeat, intricate and often hilarious thriller, A Sense of Rumor crackles with the gritty dialogue of newsrooms and precinct houses, of diners and street people, all set amid the Southern California beach cities' sunshine. Can Josh get the goods on the perps, prove his own innocence to the cops, and straighten out his ramshackle personal life-before it's too late? Or will his latest story give new meaning to the word "deadline"?