Electric Country Roulette // Eye of the Storme — W.L. Ripley

There isn't much that can lure enigmatic NFL star Wyatt Storme away from his life of splendid isolation in the mountains near Denver. One thing that can is his friendship with Chick Easton - a hard-drinking, wisecracking, much-decorated fellow Vietnam vet, who is all too willing to coax Storme into trouble. Another is a plea for help from Sandra Collingsworth, a beautiful television journalist, whose energy intoxicates Storme and whose love undermines his stoicism and disenchantment with modern society.
Electric Country Roulette is set in the Branson, Missouri, resort area - "The New Nashville" - one of the fastest-growing areas in the United States. Once an obscure fisherman's paradise, North Branson (a boomtown outpacing its namesake, Branson), has exploded into a fireball of electric marquee lights, country music stars, and greed - the quick march of progress spawning an underbelly of corruption and crime. Aided by Sandy and Chick, Wyatt investigates the death of a young college woman who had accused celebrity country singer Travis Conrad of date rape. The local police are apathetic, even hostile, to questions about the murder, which they call an "accident."
Entangled beyond their expectations, the trio eventually uncover a conspiracy, hatched by a nest of unscrupulous land speculators, to exploit a lucrative deal bringing Disney World to the Ozarks. Along the way the three encounter bodyguards, mob leg-breakers, seamy hucksters, and corrupt public officials who have incentive to silence Storme and, even more, his girlfriend. When Storme's investigation puts Sandy at grave risk, Storme and Easton set a deadly trap for the perpetrators. But vengeance exacts an onerous and unintended toll as the escapade rips open a wound in Storme's tortured soul - a soul already scarred by the postwar trauma of Vietnam - a wound that provides a clue as to why the iconoclastic hero has chosen his reclusive lifestyle.