ATLANTA - (NewMediaWire) - December 5, 2014 -  Get pulled over in Astoria, Georgia, on your way to sunny Florida and you may never arrive at your destination. Such is the premise for Joey Ledford’s new novel, SPEED TRAP, in which every innocent traveler is a pawn for the evil cops populating this seemingly sleepy 1950s town.

Even though the novel is set in the past, it could have been ripped from today’s headlines. Earlier this fall, two north Florida towns, Waldo and Lawtey, south of fictional Astoria, were both accused of overzealous speed enforcement tactics, targeting a later generation of “snowbirds.”

SPEED TRAP is an action-packed crime mystery just released in paperback on Amazon and on Kindle. It is the debut novel of Joey Ledford, a former award-winning columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the largest newspaper in the Southeast.

Ledford takes his readers to small town Georgia of 1959, when travelers bound for sunny Florida on ramrod straight two-lane roads were easy pickings for the sinister cops of Astoria. Andy of Mayberry was right up the road, but Astoria is no Mayberry and these cops aren’t anything like Barney Fife.

Fictional Astoria is a free-standing criminal enterprise, with “cash on demand” speeding tickets and impossible to win dice games spearheaded by carny-like country store owners. There are also cat houses offering pleasures of the flesh. The town has one red light, and it is manipulated to go straight to red from green just as tourists pass through.

Don O’Briant, former longtime book editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, called SPEED TRAP a “suspenseful Southern Gothic.”

Ledford, he writes, “has created a compelling murder mystery with a colorful cast of Southern characters who would be right at home in Deliverance or the Dukes of Hazzard.”

Ledford’s Governor of Georgia, a quote-a-minute populist named Buford L. Dunlap, has had his fill of his state’s reputation being sullied by backwater Astoria. He retaliates against strongman Earl “Boss” Griffin by putting up billboards on either side of town to warn travelers of the speed trap and “clip joints” where travelers could have their wallets emptied.

Dunlap sends state troopers to guard the billboards, but both are burned down while the troopers are conveniently diverted. One trooper, Cal Bocock, is taken to a mysterious murder scene by a young man terrified of the local cops.

Smart, handsome and quietly ambitious, Bocock impresses his handlers in Atlanta with his initiative and is promoted to special agent in charge of an investigation targeting the corrupt community.

He moves into town among the locals and soon learns that Astoria’s corruption runs much deeper than speeding tickets and dice games.  His life becomes a game of good cop versus a cadre of bad cops as he not only tries to ferret out wrongdoers, but also stay alive.

SPEED TRAP is available in paperback on Amazon as well as on Kindle.

Ledford, who lives in suburban Atlanta, is available for media interviews, more information or review copies. Contact him at joeyledford at bellsouth.net .

  

 

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