Trouble Follows: Two Against the Mob (Nick and Angela Book 1)

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Synopsis

Angela’s character as a caring person shines through as she relates to people, including people of another country and a new friend Tina, who visits Angela in San Diego. Some would characterize Angela as naïve but she was really quite realistic and insightful when the facts were available to her. Her father feared for her safety and explained his restrictions on her activities outside the home with the fact that they were a wealthy family and Angela was a kidnapping target. In so doing he hid his illegal activity as a drug importer. Angela’s character contrasts sharply with her brother Manuel who is the antithesis of his sister.
Nick’s life experience is a growth experience from the timid and passive , to self-assured and adventurous. The underlying message is that people can change. This metamorphous leads to, among other things, his relationship with Angela, a person he could never have attracted without his personal evolution. The portrayal of many of the men from that era is accurate and even insightful as to the causes of timidity.
Nick’s love affair with Angela leads to his knowledge of the Hernandez family and ultimately to their drug dealings and murder. That knowledge ultimately leads to his having to assume a new identity provided by San Diego’s version of a witness protection program. He experienced betrayal by the police in San Diego, and by the Annette, who posed as a friend in Pleasantville, Oregon where Nick went in the witness protection program. Annette was recruited by threats from the Washington State Mafia. Annette not much of a crook herself was controlled by criminals, which scared her into setting Nick up to be killed. The Seattle Mafia family was recruited on behalf of Angela’s brother, Manuel, and the San Diego Mexifia to spy on and then kill Nick.
Angela refused to promise to keep the Hernandez family’s criminality secret. Manuel showed his pathological side when he shot his sister to keep her from going public with that secret.
Nick made a place for himself in Pleasantville and contributed to local causes including improving business conditions and exposing a crooked enterprise that was in the process of stealing the town’s limited water supply. These acts became part of his transformation into a self-assured and adventurous individual. In Pleasantville, he was able to utilize his experience in scuba diving and flying. Those experiences provide a tie back to his early experience in flying and diving in San Diego, adventures relevant as steps toward becoming the man who could hold the affections of Angela.
When in Pleasantville he is nearly killed by the San Diego Mexifia. The Mexifia had traveled to Oregon in a helicopter.
Nick uses his training as a Mechanical Engineer and his competence in adventure sports, to solve local problems and allow him to secretly travel to San Diego and eliminate Manuel. Those feats of flying and diving, would not have been possible without earlier experience in flying and diving in San Diego. Nick showed that adventures entered into purely for fun can become steps toward becoming a complete man.
His preparations for eliminating his nemesis Manuel, demonstrate how difficult it would be to travel a great distance, kill someone and return without leaving a trace. This process is the final step in Nick’s maturation and ironically develops the commitment and determination he will need to regain and preserve his love relationship with Angela.