Brannon's Choice

Broughton J. "Bruff" 'Brannon, IV has no experience as a private investigator when his namesake uncle dies and leaves him the Fan Detective Agency in Richmond, Virginia. The offers he receives to sell the business from Clive Morgan, who owns the largest security firm in Richmond, and Garnett Davis, his uncle's partner tempt him to cash in his inheritance and join the business of his friend, Hobie Pickett. But curiosity gets the better of Brannon and he speaks to the Mizelles, an elderly couple his uncle was enroute to see when a truck rammed the car, killing him. Betty Ann Mizelle, the couple's daughter, also died in a car wreck. Twenty years in the past, she drowned in Chesapeake Bay while a passenger in Virginia Senator Mike Fitzhugh's car. The Mizelles want Brannon to pursue new information from their neighbor, Hank Sauer. Despite doubting his abilities, Brannon reopens the notorious case. A letter from Alan Zinck, co-owner of Al 'n' Bevo's Ice Cream, asks the Fan Detective Agency to take on an industrial esponage case. As the former hippie turned ice cream king describes the threat to his new confectionery process, Brannon learns the truck that killed his uncle hauled milk for Al 'n' Bevo. As the two cases twine around him, Brannon also renews old friendships and romances, and these come into conflict with his new relationships. Brannon disinters the past in many ways and is often perplexed by the choices he must make in his new life.