Books by Gary Reilly

All he wanted to do that day was drive into town to look for a job. But when Pete Larkey turns the ignition key, his car won't start. He decides to walk to town. He'll have a morning beer at the Lemon Tree Lounge and buy a new battery for his car. He refuses to feel victimized. At least, he tries. But inside the bar is "the last man on earth" that Pete Larkey wants to see. A guy named Morton will ask a few questions that will change the course of Pete Larkey's life in a deep, dark way. There's a stolen car, a hit-and-run accident, mistaken identity, a body in his bathroom and a deadly encounter with a condescending con man named Benny.Pete Larkey knows he's not a perfect fit for the squeaky-clean town of Crestmoor. "Everything in Crestmoor is clean and tidy," he thinks, "except the inner lives of people like me." This innocent trip to fix his car will prove that point beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The Discharge is the third novel in a trilogy about military life and its aftermath by the late writer Gary Reilly. The novels are based on Reilly’s service as an MP in Vietnam and his experiences before and after the war. Private Palmer, Reilly’s protagonist, has trained to become a military policeman (The Enlisted Men’s Club,) served a year in the Southeast Asian war zone (The Detachment) and now faces the challenge of finding his away again as a civilian (The Discharge). The transition at home is rocky. Palmer’s strategies for surviving military tedium and coping with danger don’t serve him well. He kills time in Denver, bounces around San Francisco and Los Angeles chasing a California dream, and finally ends up behind the wheel of taxi––his destiny all along.