The Desert Look — Bernard Schopen

Reno private eye Jack Ross has been living off the desert for six months when his idyll is interrupted by TV newswoman Miranda Santee, who wants his help on a story.
Miranda has an old photograph of two Vegas showgirls who, the story goes, robbed a mobster of one million dollars thirty years earlier.

One of the showgirls vanished; she may have been Miranda's grandmother.

The other showgirl died. She was Ross's mother.

Reluctant to return to civilization but wanting to learn the truth about his mother's death, Ross comes out of the desert. From Reno casinos to the Vegas Strip to small dusty desert towns to overgrown mountain ranches, Ross follows a trail of stories--stories told by whores, gangsters, celebrity poker players, Western Swing musicians, and desert hermits--before finding his answers at the end of a convoluted road, deep in the interior of Nevada.