Welcome to Sonnymarshall.com suspense thriller

Sonny Marshall, 34, is a talented musician, a versatile sax man who plays alto, tenor, and soprano saxophones, mainly Selmers.  He also plays the piano and guitar, but his passion lies with the sweet, mellow tones of the sax.  His influences are John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, and Sonny Rollins.

He was born in Pasadena, California, and now lives in San Francisco.  He's deceptively fast and tough for a musician.  He has fourth-degree black belts in Aikido and Krav Maga.  When people are in trouble, he doesn't hesitate to use his martial arts skills to defend them and himself.  

When he was younger, he rode a custom Harley Sportster.  A bad accident severely injured his left leg.  Many operations later, he still has pain in his left knee and needs help managing the pain--more help than he wants to admit.

Katrina "Kat" Hastings, 36, is a Detective Sergeant with the Sacramento Police Department.  The kidnapping of Erin Hightower was her case.  Her ex-husband owns a Sherwin-Williams franchise in the city.  They divorced after he had an affair.  They have one daughter, Sara.

She was born in Sacramento and graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in Criminal Justice from Sacramento State and joined the Sacramento Police Department (SPD) after attending the police academy.  Her father, John Dupree, is retired from the SPD.

  As a detective in SPD, Kat handles missing persons and runaways.  She is a good investigator, tenacious and insightful, and she's frustrated with her lack of progress on the Hightower case.  She is scrappy and determined, but she can lose her composure when she gets frustrated.  She is good with a gun but not strong enough to fight without one.  She will try to reason her way out of a situation rather than resort to violence.  However, if she has a weapon, she is fearless and bold.  A no-nonsense cop, she wants to follow the rules and make solid arrests.

Mac (Marilyn Anne Crittenden), 30, is an associate designer for a fashion house in San Francisco.  She travels frequently for her job, loves nightclubbing, and drinks fine white wines.  She was born in San Diego and graduated from UCLA with a BA in art and from the Otis School of Fashion Design with an MFA.  Mac worked as a model for several years before deciding that she liked it better on the other side of the camera.  She is developing her own line of chic casual wear for young working women.

What drives her?  Having everything be perfect. She is beautiful and charming and well liked, and she wants the perfect job, career, husband, marriage, and children.  Those are her strengths and her blindspots.

Ari Kirakosian, 50, is an Armenian American and the owner of BiblioTech, one of San Francisco's most unique bookstores.  That's his day job.  He is also a shadowy power broker with ties to the underworld and others who have loose connections to law and order.  He is a fixer and can broker deals that less-connected people can't.  He is trusted for his discretion and his ability to find the right resources to solve problems.  He is the founder of the Philosopher's Club and one of Sonny's most trusted friends.

 Ari is a computer wizard who worked for Microsoft in the early days and made a nice nest egg. While there, he perfected a stock-picking program that he used to turn his nest egg into a fortune.   

He is not married but has a long-time, live-in girlfriend, a French actress named Catherine Gauthier, who is now a talented painter. 

John Sebastiani, 45, half-Italian, half-Scottish, was born in Flint, Michigan. He left high school at 17 and worked on a freighter in Lake Superior. He got a GED while on board and later joined the Marines, fought in Afghanistan, and then became a Navy Seal, doing dark work in the Middle East. 

He read Thomas Aquinas and left the military for a Jesuit Seminary in New York. He studied at Fordham and was ordained a priest. He remained a priest for 10 years, serving at the Archdioceses in New York and Chicago. 

He grew disenchanted with the priesthood and left at 35.  Since then he has been a security consultant. He moved to San Francisco, worked for DHS at the Port of San Francisco, attended Cal Berkeley, and had classes in philosophy with Professor Julien Kito, which is how he met Ari. Through Kirakosian, he is now connected with other power figures in the Bay area and does consulting work for corporations and wealthy individuals there.  He has murky ties to the FBI and CIA.

Earl Zepeda, 29, is from the rough streets of East San Jose, a former gang member who escaped when the gang's demands went beyond what he was willing to do.  He thinks of Ari Kirakosian as a surrogate father and is fiercely loyal to him. Earl is tough, fast, wily, and combative:  one serious badass. He is savagely protective of Ari and Ari's interests, loyal beyond measure, determined,  and cold-blooded when he needs to be.  Earl is someone not to be trifled with. 

Of all the men Sonny knows, Earl is the one he would least want to face in a fight.  But if Earl is on your side, there are no more steadfast or capable allies.

Julien Kito, 72, was Ari's philosophy professor at the University of California-Berkeley.  He is the most contemplative member of the Philosopher's Club, which was named in his honor.  Julien has strong ties to the Japanese and broader Asian community in the Bay Area and has some national renown for his works on Eastern philosophy.

Julien is a master of the ancient Chinese baord game Weiqi (Go).  He is a longstanding member of the American Go Association and has an AGA rating of 10.06.

Catherine Gauthier, 44, was born in Paris and still has an extensive family there. She owns an apartment in Paris and spends part of her time there.  She is a former actor, now a painter.  She enjoys stimulating conversation and good company but also the solitude of her studio and the act of creating art, that intense moment when all else fades except her focus on the piece she is working on.

When she isn’t immersed in a painting or facing a deadline, and when she’s not moody or temperamental, she has a good sense of humor and enjoys laughing, loving, and being alive.  She and Ari are devoted to each other but haven't married and won't.  Neither believes in the institution.

Garth Wyman, 48, is the co-owner of Wyman Brothers Motors in Oakland, California, and the drummer in the Storm Lake Blues Band.  He grew up in Stockton and left home at 16, did two years for drug possession, and then joined his older brother customizing Harleys. He was hooked on heroin at 18 but kicked it and now avoids drugs except for the occasional joint.

He is an anarchist, crass and iconoclastic, but he'd sell his soul to help a buddy.  Garth is well-connected in the bike scene, frequents outlaw clubs, and knows bikers from Seattle to San Antonio.  He keeps a set of drums at his shop and practices when he's not being an artist with chrome and steel.  

The X Man, Xavier McQueen, 49, is the leader and bass player of the Storm Lake Blues Band.  He's a big man, a former Marine, with Semper Fi tats and an attitude.  But though he looks like an NFL linebacker, he's actually a teddy bear at heart.  A loving father of three, he's married to Shirlene Jackson McQueen and devotes all his time to his music.  When he's not performing with Storm Lake, he backs other artists in Sonny's recording studio and writes music.  He's an advocate for young musicians in the Bay Area, teaches bass at a musical conservatory, and has co-produced albums for some up-and-coming recording artists.

Paul Fisher, 46, is a homicide detective with the San Francisco Police Department.  He is a hard-working, dedicated career cop--and Sonny's confidential connection in SFPD.  He is relentless in his pursuit of murderers but has a soft spot in his heart for hard-luck cases like Annie Porlier.  

He was born in Burlington, Vermont, and attended NYU, graduating with bachelor's and master's degrees in Criminal Justice. He had intended to go to law school but spent four years with NYPD and found police work more interesting. After moving to 

San Francisco, he met and married Emily Augusta Lidstrom.  They have four children.