Table of Contents
Simply put, the finest crime suspense series Ive come across in the last twenty years... your basic cant-put -em-down thrill rides.
Stephen King
China Lake
[An] exciting mix. Great stuff. Independent on Sunday
"Meg Gardiner makes it all work... amazingly entertaining. " Stephen King
"With a colorful cast of richly delineated characters, a protagonist with whom the readers will easily identifyall big hearted, quick tongued, and hair-trigger tempered... a fast-paced ride through some of the more dubious nooks and crannies of the American dream. The Guardian (UK)
Fast and hard-edged. Buy it, read it. Hull Daily Mail
A cracker, with memorable characters, memorable lines, and a plot that races along to an explosive ending. A great summer read. Huddersfield Daily Examiner
Very well written, racy, and witty. Tangled Web
Kill Chain
Evan Delaney is a paragon for our times: tough, funny, clever, brave, tireless, and compassionate. The pace and inventiveness never flag, and the climax... is both nail-biting and moving. But the brilliant writing is what puts this thriller way ahead of the competition. Intelligent escapism at its best. The Guardian (UK)
I loved every minute of it. A breathtaking thriller, gripping and relentless.
Caroline Carver, CWA Dagger-winning author of Blood Junction
A rattling good read. News of the World
Brilliant. Evening Telegraph (Peterborough, UK)
The action is high octane from the first page. Once you pick it up, its a very hard book to put down. My Weekly
Fast and furious. The Literary Review
Crosscut
Full of classic Gardiner one-liners... but mostly theres a serious freezerload of scare-you-silly chills.
Stephen King
A tense and exciting thriller where almost anything seems possible. A conspiracy theorists must-have.
Independent on Sunday
Easily one of the best thrillers Ive read this year. I could barely wait to get to the next page. If you start this book, be prepared to be unable to put it down. Meg Gardiner has written a cracker. Caroline Carver
This book rips. It makes Silence of the Lambs look like Mary had a little oneit never lets up.
Adrienne Dines, author of The Jigsaw Maker
Jericho Point
Meg Gardiner dishes out the gripping plot in tense helpings. Short, punchy chapters keep the pace flowing, and youll find it impossible to find a resting point.
Evening Times (Glasgow)
[Gardiners] depictions of the criminal elements of the Hollywood fringe and the local drugs culture is a tightly observed slice of realism. This is a relentless, claustrophobic examination of mistaken identity and the terror of being accused of a crime for which you are not responsible.
Sherlock Magazine
Fast-paced, witty, and brutal.
The Independent (London)
Mission Canyon
A harrowing (and all-too-timely) story of corporate greed and evildoing in quirky Southern California.
Jeffery Deaver
A rattling good read with an unexpected twist.
The Sunday Telegraph
Fiction at its finest... many nail-biting moments and hand-wringing twists. Evening Telegraph (Peterborough, UK)
If you read Sue Grafton, Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly, or Nelson DeMille, youre going to think Meg Gardiner is a gift from heaven for thriller/mystery readers." Stephen King
"Meg Gardiner is a welcome addition to the ranks of American thriller writers. The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Meg Gardiner has rekindled my interest in thrillers.
The Independent (London)
Meg Gardiner is a class act at the top of her game.
My Weekly
Meg Gardiner has a powerful stylefast paced, immediate, and imaginative. Sherlock Magazine
Meg Gardiner goes from strength to strength.
OneWord Radio
Meg Gardiner is brilliant at making the over-the-top seem utterly convincing. The Guardian (UK)
Meg Gardiner hard-boils her American crime with the best of them.... If you like Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich, you ought to have discovered Gardiner by now.
Evening Telegraph (Peterborough, UK)
Meg Gardiner takes us to places we hope well never have to go in reality. Caroline Carver
Also by Meg Gardiner
Mission Canyon
Jericho Point
Crosscut
Kill Chain
The Dirty Secrets Club
For Paul
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For invaluable help with this novel, I thank Ann Aubrey Hanson; Carolina Shreve; Sally Gardiner; Sara Gardiner, MD; Marilyn Moreno, attorney at law; Nancy Fraser; Adrienne Dines; Irena Kowal; Milena Banks; Melinda Roughton; Bonni Connell; Jane Warren; Mary Albanese; and Frank Gardiner, who gave me everything that counted. For their encouragement and advice, I also thank my agent, Giles Gordon, and my editor, Sue Fletcher.
Peter Wyoming didnt shake hands with people; he hit them with his presence like a rock fired from a sling-shot. He was a human nail, lean and straight with brush-cut hair, and when I first saw him he was carrying a picket sign and enough rage to scorch the ground. The sign read, GOD HATES SLUTS, and he held it erect in his fist, aimed so mourners read it as we stepped from the church into the autumn sunshine. Behind him, his followers hoisted other placards. AIDS CURES WHORES. SEX ED = AIDS = DAMNATION. Ahead, the dead womans daughter walked behind the casket, gripping her husbands hand for support.
When Wyoming saw her, he began chanting, Hey, hey, what do you say? Claudine burns in hell today!
That was when I made my first mistake. I took him for a grandstander, a bigot, a man who, from the looks of his sign, had trouble with women. And I underestimated him.
Wyoming was the pastor of a church called the Remnant, which proclaimed itself the last swatch of godliness in a pustulating world. They thought Santa Barbara, this postcard city of acrylic blue skies and red tile roofs, of coffee bars and beaches and Mexican-American warmth, was a sluice gate on the sewer pipe to hell. They liked to drive home the point by jeering at AIDS funerals.
We ignored them. The dead womans daughter, Nikki Vincent, had known they were coming and told us to treat them as if they were invisible. Treat them like roaches underfoot.
Now Nikki laid a coffee brown hand on the coffin. Saying, Dont worry, Mom, Ill take care of you. Or maybe drawing strength from her mother one last time. Claudine Girard had never backed down from anything. A small woman with a Haitian French accent, she was an AIDS activist even before the disease raked into her. She had also been my university professor, who salted her literature classes with commands to stand straight and belly up to life. Her death seemed impossible.
She had been well-known in Santa Barbara, and reporters were clustering outside the Spanish-style church, under palm trees stirring in the breeze. They looked eager for action. Wyoming, anxious to supply it, tightened his bolo tie and stared at Nikkiseven months pregnant, holding on to her husbands arm and Claudines coffin, ready to run the gauntlet.
