Southern California, May 1970, after Kent State. An economics professor is killed in a campus bombing. The FBI arrests a known radical and closes the case. The victim was collateral damage until detectives Jimmy Sommes and Carol Loomis investigate the closed case and discover a tangled web of secrets and deceit.
BASELINE ROAD IS AN AWARD WINNER
Baseline Road received a Silver Medal in 2023 in the Crime Fiction Category from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association as part of its long-running and highly regarded CIPA EVVY book award competition.
Praise for Baseline Road
“Bombs, babes, and burning rubber. Buckle up! It’s 1972, and that’s cordite you smell with the patchouli oil and pot smoke. With this delightful detective boogie, Davidson hits all the right notes, sex, thugs, and rock and roll!”
Ed Davis, author of The Last Professional
“There is an unmistakable vibrancy in how Orlando Davidson writes in capturing those tumultuous times.”
Garrett Hongo, author of The Perfect Sound
“Cops and crooks, babes, bombers, and bikers--all the idiosyncratic denizens of California in the Seventies come to life in this delight of a novel. The music of the time provides a rich, nostalgic accompaniment to a plot that winds and twists its way through highways and byways to a satisfying conclusion.”
Vicki Lane, author of And The Crows Took Their Eyes and of the Elizabeth Goodweather Mysteries
“With tight, well-paced plotting, Davidson transports the reader to Baseline Road and Southern California of the 1970s. It’s a worthwhile trip! Historical facts and figures are expertly woven into a twisty-turny ode to a culture and landscape filled with well-drawn characters who are flawed enough to be believable and interesting enough to keep the reader engaged well past bedtime.”
Tena Frank, Author of Final Rights
“Orlando Davidson is a gifted writer, and his first novel Baseline Road is riveting, complex and intriguing. It’s a book full of compelling action and irresistible tension, and at the same time is grounded in empathy and compassion for its characters, including its hired killer. In that way Baseline Road is a rare thing – a moving crime novel with emotional depth and real heart.”
Tommy Hays, author of The Pleasure Was Mine
North of Foothill, the new Jimmy Sommes crime novel, will be released by Artemesia Publishing on March 10, 2026.
Southern California, May 1974. Shots ring out from behind the stage of a Cucamonga music club on a spring night in 1974. Off-duty San Bernardino County Homicide Investigator, Jimmy Sommes, just there to hear some country rock, finds himself running toward danger. Behind the club, tires squeal as Sommes catches a quick glimpse of a crazed gunman and his getaway driver making their escape, leaving two dead bodies behind.
As the murder case moves east to Barstow and its vast surrounding desert, it spirals into a complex web of crimes. All the while, Sommes misses his reporter girlfriend, Allie, who is chasing the Patricia Hearst kidnapping story. Struggling to keep his life—and his drinking—under control, Sommes must
somehow stem the tide of violence and still manage to find his way home; just north of Foothill.
Praise for North of Foothill
“The freeways flow freely enough that characters journey up to Barstow without a second thought. There are cop bars, wide open spaces and a vaguely frontier spirit, a sense that the characters are navigating a zone where the city rules don’t extend…The story is funny, tragic, absurd, sexy, and exciting…Who needs Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Coast Highway orMulholland Drive? Jimmy Sommes has Foothill Boulevard, Mission Boulevard, and Sierra Avenue. Orlando Davidson brings them to life.”
David Allen, Columnist, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin from his foreward for North of Foothill.
“Buckle up as Orlando Davidson and Homicide Detective Jimmy Sommes drive you, tires squealing, into the dark underbelly of Southern California. Sommes is drawn into a deadly game of betrayal and redemption where bullets fly and old friends become dangerous foes. This is a high stakes, low morals game, and a cat-and-mouse caper you won’t soon forget.”
Ed Davis, author of The Last Professional
ORLANDO DAVIDSON IN THE PRESS
Prominent Honolulu blogger Ian Lind recently wrote about the author's journey from serving as a public official in Hawaii to starting a new career as a fiction writer.
Read the iLind blog post here
