Finding Ricky

<p>An undercover agent famed for taking out major bad guys Cowboy now finds himself in a twilight world of shifting reality and surreal experience when he enters a special program under the direction of an unseen supervisor known only as the Soup. Ostensibly the program aims at helping him deal with declining performance brought about by the disappearance of his 13-year-old son Ricky now a runaway hiding out in the lowly streets of the south side of town. The Soup tasks Cowboy with taking out Awesome and Scorpion two high level bad guys but he soon suspects that the real target is the truth about the suicide of his wife eight years earlier a horrifying event that Ricky witnessed and resulted in his troubled childhood. Cowboy hid the truth from everyone including himself but with the mysterious Soup stripping away layer after layer of his defenses he can no longer conceal his role in her death-nor the impact it had on his son and himself. All is revealed in an explosive ending.<br><br><em>Finding Ricky </em>is not intended exclusively for an older audience but it would be best appreciated by people who have had the experience of raising children and also by people who have had the misfortune of growing up in a dysfunctional family. More than anything it is a story about a spiritual intervention in Cowboy's life-the invisible and seemingly omniscient supervisor serving as a spirit guide not unlike the spirits of past present and potential future of Charles Dickens' <em>A Christmas Carol</em>. With Cowboy the Soup-spirit uses at time exquisite kindness and unconditional love to give him an experience of what he has never known before; at other times he sets Cowboy up for rough treatment intended to break up old patterns. The story works as a psychological thriller but it is the spiritual interpretation that ties everything together.</p>