"Kem Nunn writes directly out of the lineage of James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. If there is a contemporary writer with a deeper sense of evil, I don't know who it would be. Pomona Queen is utterly first-rate" -- Jim Harrison

Lost in a southern California barrio, Earl Dean has a hard time believing there is one living soul in this foul-smelling night who wants to be found by a salesman hawking vacuum cleaners. What awaits Earl in the faint glow of a distant porch light is the world of Dan Brown.

Dan Brown's brother has been killed. Dan has plans to handle the revenge, and Earl has strayed into the crossfire. Dan is the last of the road warriors, a murderous, drug-crazed biker who only thinks of laws as things to break. But more than Buddy Brown lies dead in the moonlight. From a time when the valley was the hub of the nation's citrus industry to the defoliated sorry mess of today, it has come down to one fact. Earl Dean, broken-hearted vacuum cleaner salesman, owns the last single acre of orange groves in Pomona. And like his great-grandfather before him, he must come forward to claim his inheritance.

"Kem Nunn does for Pomona what Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Nathanael West did for Los Angeles." -- Los Angeles Times

"Nunn is a swift, economical stylist with a gift for the absurd." -- San Francisco Chronicle

In seedy Pomona, Dan Brown's brother has been killed. Dan plans his revenge, but it isn't only Buddy Brown who's died. Pomona Queen takes a black-comic look at the desolation of this sleazy demimonde, with its decaying orange groves and its violent, druggy denizens. "Nunn is a swift, economical stylist with a gift for the absurd." - San Francisco Chronicle