<div><b>Investigating a grisly murder in the park, Lieutenant Hastings finds that the victim had some secrets of her own</b><BR>San Francisco&rsquo;s first murder of the year takes more than two weeks to come, but when it does, it&rsquo;s ugly. June Towers is seventeen, a high school senior just six months from graduation, when the police find her dead in the park. She&rsquo;s lovely, in the patchwork jeans and rainbow palette favored by the city&rsquo;s youth, but her hair is matted with blood. Was the murderer a mugger, a rapist, a serial killer&mdash;or someone the young girl called a friend?<BR>In search of answers, Lieutenant Frank Hastings digs into June&rsquo;s past and finds that she was many things to many people. Her mother thought she was a good girl&mdash;a fine student with a future&mdash;but to a certain class of her peers, June Towers was something else altogether. Hastings has little time to come to grips with this strange personality before another good girl turns up dead.</div>

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Hiding Place

<div><b>Investigating an ex-cop&rsquo;s death, Hastings gets drawn into a family conspiracy</b><BR>It was just after he made lieutenant that Frank Hastings told Charlie Quade to resign. They had known each other at the academy, and Quade was a rotten cop from day one. Dogged by rumors of corruption, Quade left without protest, eking out a living doing security work. When Hastings hears Quade has been shot dead, he doesn&rsquo;t blink. The only surprise is the place the ex-cop died.<BR>Alexander Guest is one of the wealthiest lawyers in the city, and Hastings can&rsquo;t understand why he would hire a thug like Quade to protect his grandson from the father-in-law who wants to kidnap him. When Quade&rsquo;s body is found, the grandson is long gone, and the father-in-law is the natural suspect. But Hastings knows better than to trust the rich, and he refuses to accept the easy answer.</div>

Victims

<div><b>A murder witness flees to California for protection, taking refuge in the theater</b><BR>Diane Cutler is half drunk and half stoned when she sees her stepfather carrying the body out of the house. She and her boyfriend look on, horrified, as real estate tycoon Preston Daniels loads his dead mistress into the car. Unable to resist their curiosity, they follow him, and watch as he dumps the poor woman&rsquo;s body in the rocks and sand of the Cape Cod landfill. Diane doesn&rsquo;t know what to do with this dark knowledge, but her boyfriend sees it as an opportunity for blackmail&mdash;and is nearly beaten to death for it.<BR>Terrified of her stepfather, Diane flees to the West Coast to ask theater director and sometimes private detective Alan Bernhardt for help. Alan is unavailable, but recommends his girlfriend and prot&eacute;g&eacute;, Paula, for the job. Paula may be an excellent actress, but playing PI will prove to be one of the most dangerous performances of her career.</div>

Except for the Bones

<div><b>A dying art collector asks Bernhardt to revisit him in his darkest hour</b><BR>The first time Betty Giles went missing, her employers wanted her dead. They hired Alan Bernhardt, theater director and sometimes PI, to find her, but when he discovered their scheme, he drew a sawed-off shotgun to save her life. Now Betty&rsquo;s missing again, hiding somewhere in Europe, and her old bosses want her found. Will Bernhardt deliver her to the man who once tried to have her killed?<BR>It certainly isn&rsquo;t easy to refuse Raymond DuBois, a billionaire art collector who insists his feud with Betty was nothing but an innocent misunderstanding. He&rsquo;s dying, and promises he can clear her name if Alan can only locate her. The case seems like a trap, but the director has one thing working for him. Unlike last time, he knows that trusting anyone could be suicide.</div>

Full Circle

<div><b>A senator&rsquo;s life is in danger&mdash;and anyone in San Francisco could be a killer</b><BR>Senate majority leader Donald Ryan is a kingmaker, with the power to make or break presidencies, and the ability to reshape the country with a flick of his pen. He is also a very sick man, recovering from a heart attack that must be kept secret at all costs. But when a series of death threats jeopardizes his planned return to public life, the FBI calls in San Francisco police lieutenant Frank Hastings to find the would-be assassin. He has one week until the senator&rsquo;s next public appearance&mdash;and hundreds of thousands of possible suspects.<BR>Because Ryan&rsquo;s recent heart attack is considered a state secret, Hastings is forced to withhold crucial details from his fellow detectives. Any degree of stress could stop the senator&rsquo;s fragile heart, which means that even if a bullet misses, the sound of the  gunshot might be enough to kill him. To save the lawmaker, Hastings may have to put himself in the line of fire.</div>

Stalking Horse

<div><b>A pious killer stalks the Tenderloin, hunting streetwalkers in the name of the Lord</b><BR>After years of turning tricks and shooting junk, Amy has reached the end of the line. Heroin has wrecked her body, and her pimp is contemplating cutting her loose when she takes a client to the Bayside Hotel. The john asks her to turn around and undress, and as she slips out of her clothes for the thousandth time, he places his hands around her neck and starts to squeeze.<BR>San Francisco Homicide does not rush to investigate the death of a hooker. Although Lieutenant Frank Hastings does his due diligence, he has no expectation of finding Amy&rsquo;s killer. But when the trail leads him to the son of a famous TV evangelist, he realizes that the case may be even tougher than he expected. Elton Holloway is a fanatically religious young man&mdash;but does he love God enough to kill?</div>

The Pariah

<div><b>A moonlighting director finds his sideline more dangerous than he expected</b><BR>Alan Bernhardt is just starting rehearsal when his pager goes off. No one in the small San Francisco theater minds&mdash;they know that to make it on the stage, you have to be prepared to do all sorts of odd jobs off of it. But this director&rsquo;s job is odder than most. He works for Herbert Dancer, head of a boutique private investigation service. A corporate secretary has vanished with a sheaf of valuable documents, and it will take an off-Broadway sensibility to bring her home.<BR>Bernhardt is just closing in on the woman and her boyfriend when he learns that she isn&rsquo;t running for a profit, but for her life. To save her from the men who hired him, Bernhardt must find her and protect her&mdash;because his artistic vision does not include blood on his hands.</div>

Bernhardt's Edge

<div><b>A gay man&rsquo;s murder leads Hastings to a blackmail plot</b><BR>Charles Hardaway climbs the hill to his house, immediately missing the bright lights and conversation of the bar and dreading the return to his lover, who is slowly dying of AIDS. But Hardaway&rsquo;s self-pity is interrupted by a pipe-wielding stranger, who crushes his skull before slipping away. It&rsquo;s nighttime in the Castro, and another gay man has been sent to his grave.<BR>Homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings is tempted to write the killing off as another heinous instance of gay-bashing, but witnesses say the killer was alone, and seemed to know the victim. Digging into Hardaway&rsquo;s past, Hastings finds evidence that he was a blackmailer who pushed one of his targets to the breaking point. In a neighborhood where disease and hatred claim more and more lives every day, it seems one man has been done in by plain old-fashioned greed.</div>

Calculated Risk

<div><b>Hastings investigates a murder among a set of wealthy adulterers</b><BR>By the time Haney and the woman get to her apartment, they are so drunk they can hardly get through the door. They undress and begin to fool around, but before they make it to the bedroom, they have an argument. Haney is about to leave when the woman starts to laugh at him. He spins around and slugs her as hard as he can. His head is beginning to clear by the time he makes it home. He&rsquo;s just sober enough to notice the glint of a dagger before it&rsquo;s buried in his gut.<BR>Haney&rsquo;s wife finds his body at the foot of the stairs. She calls the police, but cannot tell them the truth about the evening&mdash;that she and her husband were both in other people&rsquo;s beds. Lieutenant Frank Hastings has no trouble interrogating criminals, but untangling this web of marital lies will be one of the trickiest cases of his career.</div>

Night Games

<div><b>After a concert, a goddess of rock is shot dead backstage</b><BR>It&rsquo;s the finest performance of Rebecca Carlton&rsquo;s career. The show is dedicated to her father, and the most famous woman in rock does everything she can to honor him. She gives the crowd at San Francisco&rsquo;s Cow Palace arena four encores before finally retiring backstage. The applause is still thundering through the stadium when Rebecca Carlton is shot dead.<BR>Lieutenant Frank Hastings has been fighting with his girlfriend when he gets the call. Their idol dead, Rebecca&rsquo;s fans refuse to disperse from the amphitheater, and a riot seems imminent. It takes a special plea from David Behr, the singer&rsquo;s producer and former husband, to convince the audience to go home. As the crowd files out, Hastings turns to the body. Rebecca Carlton may have been a star, but there was nothing glamorous about her murder.</div>

Mankiller

<div><b>A mob boss is dead, and his widow wants Drake to help him rest in peace</b><BR>Dominic Vennezio is found on the floor of his beachside love nest, murdered on a Sunday night. It looks like an ordinary mob hit, part of a routine power struggle with the East Coast Outfit, but Vennezio&rsquo;s widow has other suspicions. Her marriage to the kingpin had been strained ever since he began taking his secretary for weekends at the beach house, but even now, she feels a devotion to him. She wants justice for her husband&mdash;not just legal, but cosmic&mdash;and for cosmic justice, San Francisco can offer no better sleuth than Stephen Drake.<BR>A crime reporter with a clairvoyant streak, Drake&rsquo;s apprehensions about working for the mob are overcome by his sympathy for the noble widow. He starts his investigation in Los Angeles, talking to Vennezio&rsquo;s replacement, and sees immediately that it doesn&rsquo;t take a psychic to figure out that this job could be deadly.</div>

The Third Figure

<div><b>Searching for a missing society matron, Hastings finds danger amid the upper crust</b><BR>In a glamorous part of San Francisco, a maid has been strangled to death. Frank Hastings stands over the body, knowing it will be a long day. But before finishing with the crime scene, he gets another call&mdash;an officer has been shot, and Hastings must lead the tactical squad. By lunchtime, the boy who shot the officer is dead, and Hastings is hungry for an easy assignment. When he gets it, he&rsquo;ll soon wish he were back in the line of fire.<BR>The wife of a thirty-five-year-old millionaire, Carol Connoly is lovely, fabulous, and not terribly exciting&mdash;a perfect star for the society pages. Her only hobby is acting, which she pursues in grubby little black boxes on the city&rsquo;s fringe. She&rsquo;s leaving rehearsal one night when she disappears.<BR>For this brutish cop, it will take a light touch to rescue the delicate missing lady.</div>

The Disappearance

<div><b>A John Doe murder spurs Hastings to confront the leader of a Satanic cult</b><BR>For homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings, the day starts with an assassination attempt. During a rally in San Francisco&rsquo;s Civic Center, someone takes a potshot at the governor, sending the whole of downtown into chaos. Once he has taken control of the scene, Hastings chases down the gunman&mdash;a Mexican immigrant with a political bent&mdash;and captures him after a tense standoff. Miraculously, no one is killed. But Hastings&rsquo;s long day is just getting started.<BR>He&rsquo;s barely had time to catch his breath when the call comes in from Noe Valley, where an unidentified man has been found dead on a nude model&rsquo;s floor. All signs point to a simple case of death by jealousy until a second killing upends the investigation, setting Hastings on a collision course with the charismatic leader of a Satanic cult. For this homicide lieutenant, saving the governor will have been the easy part.</div>

Long Way Down

<div><b>A crime reporter with ESP tackles a double homicide</b><BR>In a San Francisco apartment building, a young woman is found strangled beside a piano player with a broken neck. He&rsquo;s a nobody&mdash;a dreamer with little talent and no future&mdash;but she is Roberta Grinnel, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the Bay Area. Stephen Drake, crime reporter for the <i>Sentinel</i>, feels nothing when he looks at their corpses, and this is a troubling fact. For Drake is a psychic, and when his sixth sense fails him, that means more trouble ahead.<BR>As Drake tries to come to grips with his cosmic gift, the mystery of the heiress and the piano player becomes the hottest story in town. To keep his gig at the paper, Drake will call on every source he has&mdash;on this plane and the astral one&mdash;but knowing danger&rsquo;s lurking doesn&rsquo;t guarantee he can stay out of its way.</div>

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The Black Door

<div><b>To honor a dying don&rsquo;s last wish, a mob lieutenant searches for hidden diamonds</b><BR>After seven years ruling his empire from prison, Don Carlo remains as powerful as ever, but his heart is beginning to fail. On the verge of death, he begs his right-hand man, Bacardo, to look after his family. Not his wife and children, the don explains, but Louise and Angela&mdash;his daughter and granddaughter from a beloved mistress who died long ago.<BR>To Louise, the don bequeaths one million dollars in diamonds, hidden in a cemetery in a tiny California town. Securing her inheritance will mean mortal danger for Louise, Bacardo, and the private investigator they hire to help them&mdash;a moonlighting director named Alan Bernhardt. Bernhardt understands the risks, but also knows that the theater and the mafia have two things in common: the understanding that a professional is only as good as his word, and that the only way to survive is to act without fear.</div>

Find Her a Grave

<div><b>A pair of murders leaves Hastings torn between following his orders and listening to his gut</b><BR>After nearly a decade as a San Francisco cop, Frank Hastings is becoming something of a stranger to kindness. He feels perfectly at home in the Draper household&mdash;a rundown Victorian not far from the streets on which he grew up&mdash;where a social worker has been beaten to death by a man hiding in the bushes. The crime looks like a mugging, but something in the husband&rsquo;s manner tells Hastings there are secrets hidden in this shabby middle-class home.<BR>He&rsquo;s closing in on the answers when a double homicide in posh Pacific Heights draws his attention away. Fearing bad publicity, his superiors tell him to drop everything and focus on this new killing, but Hastings can&rsquo;t get his mind off the death of Susan Draper. As he divides his time between the two murders, Hastings finds that for a man at home with cruelty, kindness can be terrifying.</div>

Dead Aim

<div><b>An old friend is murdered, and Hastings will do anything he can to avenge her</b><BR>When Frank Hastings knew Meredith Powell, she was a gawky ten-year-old without a care in the world. More than two decades later, she has grown into a stunning beauty&mdash;but the gleam in her eye is gone. Over lunch, Meredith confesses that she lives in terror of her emotionally abusive boyfriend, a possessive, rage-filled man named Charles. Hastings, a homicide lieutenant with the San Francisco police department, offers to help her escape. She refuses, and they part ways&mdash;unaware that Charles has been watching them the whole time.<BR>By the next morning, Meredith has been strangled, her body dumped in the park. The realization that he could have helped her, that he may actually have caused her death, tears Hastings to pieces. Obsessed with revenge, he quickly learns why homicide detectives are prevented from investigating the murders of their loved ones. But he will not rest until Charles is brought to justice&mdash;even if it costs him his badge.</div>

A Death Before Dying

<div><b>After an ice pick is used for murder in San Francisco, the Washington elite comes down on Hastings</b><BR>It starts as an everyday fender bender: Two cars collide in heavy evening traffic. But when the police arrive to take statements, the occupants of one car take off running. They leave another man behind, slumped in the backseat, dead of a single stab wound to the chest. Lieutenant Frank Hastings abandons a family dinner to take charge of the scene, which rapidly devolves into chaos. The police corner one of the runners in an abandoned building, capturing him after a standoff. The night&rsquo;s excitement may be over, but the real trouble has yet to start.<BR>The dead man is Eliot Murdock, a washed-up political commentator who came west from DC to chase the scoop of his career. As Hastings digs into Murdock&rsquo;s story, he finds himself hemmed in by Washington big shots&mdash;formidable men who have made the mistake of underestimating the strength of one very tenacious cop.</div>

Power Plays

<div><b>To unlock the secrets of a homicide, Bernhardt must connect with a terrified child</b><BR>Dennis tells the police he was sleeping when his wife was killed. Connie stumbled upon a prowler, he says, and paid for the mistake with her life. The police believe his story, but this cold man&rsquo;s crocodile tears cannot convince Connie&rsquo;s sister, Janice. She suspects her brother-in-law of a heinous crime, and it will take an unusual investigator to prove her right.<BR>Alan Bernhardt is a theater director in San Francisco who pays his rent with the odd bit of private detective work. Searching for the man who strangled Connie, his biggest obstacle isn&rsquo;t Dennis, but John&mdash;the dead woman&rsquo;s seven-year-old son. He may have witnessed something crucial on the night of the murder, but this sensitive child is too frightened to speak. Coaxing words out of John will be the toughest assignment of Alan&rsquo;s directing career, but not half as hard as keeping the boy alive.</div>

Silent Witness

<div><b>In the shadows of the Golden Gate Bridge, Hastings investigates a glamorous murder</b><BR>The killer is long gone from the crime scene when he realizes his mistake. It went perfectly, right until the end. He lured Lisa to the oceanfront park, entered her car on the passenger side, shot her twice, and escaped without being stained by her blood. He took the gun with him, as planned&mdash;but he forgot her purse, the crucial detail meant to make the crime look like a robbery. It was a simple mistake, but it could cost him everything.<BR>It does not take long for Lieutenant Frank Hastings to notice the purse&mdash;nor is he slow to notice the victim&rsquo;s beauty. Lisa Franklin was a self-described courtesan, a would-be poet who paid her rent by lavishing affection on San Francisco&rsquo;s rich and powerful. As Hastings combs through her client list, he is confronted with one vital question: Which captain of industry was foolish enough to leave the purse behind?</div>

Switchback

<div><b>For the sake of his lover, Hastings risks his career and chases a stalker</b><BR>For the past few weeks, Lieutenant Frank Hastings&rsquo;s girlfriend has sensed that she was being watched. They are on their way home from a too-chic party when Hastings spots something moving in the bushes&mdash;a shadowy figure who appears to have a gun. He should call for backup; he should stay in the car. But to protect Ann, this detective is willing to risk everything. After a chase, Hastings apprehends the lurker, but what he thought was a gun turns out to be a shotgun mike. Is someone recording Ann?<BR>Shut out of the case because it concerns his girlfriend, Hastings focuses on the murder of Flora Esterbrook Gaines&mdash;a seventy-year-old woman found murdered in her garage. Greed is the obvious motive, but finding a suspect proves tricky. Hastings divides his energy in a desperate attempt to uphold the law while at the same time protecting his beloved.</div>

Aftershock

<div><b>Stalked by a nighttime killer, a woman does whatever it takes to survive</b><BR>He calls himself Tarot. His first victim was a mother, killed while her daughter slept in the next room. His second was a truck-stop waitress, murdered&mdash;like the first woman&mdash;while she slept. After each one, he sent letters to the newspapers, boasting of his crimes and promising more to come. The third victim will die soon, he tells them. But first, she must be warned.<BR>Joanna is drinking her morning coffee when she finds the switchblade on the floor, dropped through her newspaper slot in the middle of the night. Was it left there by a neighborhood prankster with a dark sense of humor? Or is this the warning of Tarot? Her husband has left her, making Joanna the sole caretaker for their son. Until Tarot is caught, neither of them can count on a good night&rsquo;s sleep.</div>

The Third Victim

<div><b>In the underworld of San Francisco, a broken cop searches for his daughter</b><BR>Seven years ago, Frank Hastings quit on his family. After a half-baked pro football career, he had fallen in love with the bottle and needed to go west. In San Francisco, he got sober, and now he&rsquo;s one of the toughest police officers around, in a city whose counterculture does not make life easy for the men in blue. San Francisco in 1969 is an ugly place, torn apart by drugs and crime and indifference&mdash;and it&rsquo;s about to destroy Hastings&rsquo;s daughter.<BR>Claudia comes to town following a boy, a hippie kid who has filled her head with dreams of psychedelic happiness in Haight-Ashbury&mdash;and she quickly vanishes into the district&rsquo;s rainbow-colored underbelly. To find the daughter he abandoned, Hastings will push himself closer to the edge than he has in years. His first lead is a gruesome one&mdash;a young male flower child slaughtered in the Haight&mdash;but the bloody trail may lead to Claudia.</div>

The Lonely Hunter

<div><b>The most famous televangelist in America declares &ldquo;total war&rdquo; on the sinners of the earth</b><BR>Austin Holloway came to Los Angeles in the 1930s with nothing but a briefcase, a few hundred dollars, and a letter of introduction to a local radio station. The son of a revival tent preacher, Holloway wanted to bring the good word to the airwaves, first radio, and then television. He had no idea he was starting an empire.<BR>Decades later, Holloway is the richest man of God in the country; his sermons broadcast coast to coast every Sunday. But fame and fortune are not enough. He wants to share the love of Christ with those who have never tasted it before&mdash;the oppressed people of Communist China. Standing in the way of history&rsquo;s most ambitious mission trip is his failing health, and his family&mdash;which includes an alcoholic wife, an out-of-control son, and a daughter with a rebellious streak. The kingdom of heaven is open to Holloway&mdash;but getting there will mean a trip through hell.</div>

Spellbinder

<div><b>Hastings chases a serial killer whose deranged letters hold a city for ransom</b><BR>The doctor comes through his front door as he always does, a bundle of mail in hand. He&rsquo;s about to walk up the stairs when the bullet passes through his back, puncturing his heart and leaving him dead in his front hall. By the time Lieutenant Frank Hastings arrives, rigor mortis has set in, and the doctor&rsquo;s body rolls easily away from the wall. Pinned beneath him is a note that begins, &ldquo;Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief . . .&rdquo; Pay $100,000, writes &ldquo;the Masked Man,&rdquo; or a lawyer will be the next to die.<BR>There are too many lawyers in San Francisco to protect them all, and as Hastings and his team hunt for the Masked Man, the city is whipped into a frenzy of fear. As the killer&rsquo;s demands mount, the homicide department starts to wonder&mdash;after the merchant is killed, will the chief of police be next?</div>

Doctor, Lawyer . . .

<div><b>A surgeon is gunned down in the street&mdash;but who is the woman who wanted him dead?</b><BR>Brice Hanchett is a brilliant surgeon, and those who work alongside the man consider him either godlike or devilish. After years of success, he has begun to believe his own legend, and soon goes too far&mdash;toying not just with life and death, but with the heart of every woman he meets. He has a wife and a mistress, as well as the attention of all the nurses in the hospital. One of them is waiting for him when he goes out to his Jaguar, a gun in her hand. It takes only two shots to remind Brice Hanchett that even the finest surgeon cannot cheat death.<BR>Investigating the case falls to Lieutenant Frank Hastings and the boys in San Francisco Homicide. Learning that the killer was female should narrow the search, but with a victim like Hanchett, any woman&mdash;in scrubs or out&mdash;could be a suspect.</div>

Hire a Hangman

<div><b>On a fishing trip with his estranged son, Hastings comes under attack</b><BR>Lieutenant Frank Hastings checks his gun at airport security so he can meet his son the moment the boy gets off the plane in San Francisco. After a year apart, he finds Darrell to be as moody and withdrawn as any other teenager, and prays that a fishing trip will bring them closer together. He is unaware that he and Darrell are about to experience the sort of bonding that only terror can provide.<BR>Before setting off on their vacation, they arrive at Hastings&rsquo;s apartment to find that a prowler has been lurking, but managed to escape before the police got there. When they reach the lakeside cabin, the watcher is already waiting, ready to take revenge on Hastings by targeting his child. To survive the ordeal, Hastings will have to trust Darrell in ways he never expected, and Darrell will have to become a man.</div>

The Watcher

<div><b>Hastings chases a serial killer who preys on the glitterati</b><BR>Tony Frazer takes a wide berth when he sees the homeless man. A millionaire playboy, he does not consort with street people, and is in the process of skirting the derelict, eyes averted, when the stranger calls his name. The king of the society pages turns just in time to be struck by three silenced bullets, slumping to his knees and dying there in the gutter.<BR>Although witnesses insist the killer was a homeless man, homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings sees signs of a professional at work&mdash;the kind who kills quietly, then disappears into the night. In fact, as Hastings learns, the killer thinks himself a crusader&mdash;a kind of Robin Hood with a pistol&mdash;and he has many more assassinations planned. San Francisco society had better take cover, for this killer has a thirst for blue blood.</div>

Collin Wilcox
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Books By Collin Wilcox (28 Books)