Description:
A runaway girl leads Dave Brandstetter to confront a California sex cult.
Serenity ran away from home when her father was convicted of bribery. For two years, she drifted around the American Southwest, finally finding refuge in the arms of Azrael, a charismatic cult leader whose religion was founded upon blood. Long after Serenity's disappearance, the police find a mass grave containing six dead girls on Azrael's property. Thinking his daughter has been murdered, Serenity's father claims her life insurance, and promptly disappears. Now it's Dave Brandstetter's problem.
An insurance investigator with a keen eye and a skeptical mind, Dave is no stranger to savagery. But his trip to the high-priced suburbs of Los Angeles will teach him something new about the depths of human cruelty--and Azrael's mass grave is only the beginning.
Brief description:
Joseph Hansen (1923-2004) was the author of more than twenty-five novels and was a renowned short-story writer. The winner of the 1992 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, he was also the author of A Smile in His Lifetime, Living Upstairs, Job's Year, and Bohannon's Country.
Review Quotes:
"Hansen is the most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today."
-- "Los Angeles Times, praise for the author"