Don Davis has been an attorney for 45 years, specializing in corporate, business and securities law and an investment banker for 40 years. (His family arrived in the 1880s in Porterville, from Missouri.) He and his wife have 7 children; the youngest, Julie, is 14 years old and attends Palos Verdes High School.
 
Don completed his first novel, THE HILL, this year (set in the Palos Verdes area). His second novel, THE ISLAND, set on Catalina Island, is in progress. An author interview that he read in the Los Angeles Times inspired him to write THE HILL. The interviewee spoke about the three components of a story: locale, theme and characters, and how he wrote 3 pages a day.
 
 
Having lived in Palos Verdes since 1969 and enjoying mysteries himself, Don chose it as the background for his novel. Because he has encountered so many different people and personalities in his profession, he found a lot of material from which to develop his characters. THE HILL is a love story and a murder mystery that unfolds when the body of a young woman is found below the cliffs of Malaga Cove.
 
(Notes by Angi Ma Wong)