Take a Beautiful Detour back to the latter days of WWII when men were men, and women were women. Picture a handsome P.I., ex-Air force pilot, fresh from being shot down in the war, meeting a beautiful woman who reminds you of the extraordinarily alluring Veronica Lake.

“…she’s short but packed with lovely, graceful curves. She has long blonde hair that comes in waves and sparkles when the sun hits it, and a voice made for saying romantic things when it gets dark.”

Susan, or “Mike”, as our hero John calls her, is in a bind with a couple of gangsters over a valise full of diamonds.

“Mike was a pack of Lucky Strike’s, a box of Whitman’s Chocolates and a pair of silk stockings all rolled into one. She was lunch at the Chili Bowl and dinner and a dance at the Cocoanut Grove. She was sleeping in on Saturdays so you could make love to her on white sheets with the roar of the ocean just down the beach. She was Hearst Castle and Coney Island and Hollywood Premieres. She was a car parked overlooking the Pacific while we necked and forgot about the million bucks sitting on the floorboard. She was diamonds in my pocket whose value was nothing next to her soft lips and the feel of her fingers on the back of my neck. She was the reason I’d fought so hard to make it back. She was what I’d hoped for, what every guy hoped for.”

John and Susan take off for Mexico with a million's worth of diamonds, accompanied by John's two service buddies and his lovely assistant Juanita, who "was prettier than Lupe Velez and could handle a gun or a client with equal ease".
And, so the adventure begins.

Bobby Underwood is a master of telling a good story full of intriguing adventure, romance, and scattered humor without a wasted word. That’s one of the main things I love about his writing. He can spin such a full and fun tale in a small amount of space. At just over a hundred pages, Beautiful Detour has the feel of a much larger novel, due to Underwood’s exceptional ability to smoothly weave in atmosphere with flawless dialogue. I put his writing in the same company as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. That’s some pretty good company. ( )