When Garrett Asplundh's body is found under a San Diego bridge, Robbie Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are called on to the case. After the tragic death of his child and the dissolution of his marriage, Garrett - regarded as an honest, straight-arrow officer - left the SDPD to become an ethics investigator, looking into the activities of his former colleagues. At first his death, which takes place on the eve of a reconciliation with his...

Los Angeles is gripped by the exploding celebrity of Allison Murietta, her real identity unknown, a modern-day Jesse James with the compulsion to steal beautiful things, the vanity to invite the media along, and the conscience to donate much of her bounty to charity. Nobody ever gets hurt--until a job ends with ten gangsters lying dead and a half-million dollars worth of glittering diamonds missing. Rookie Deputy Charlie Hood discovers the bodies,...

Bradley Jones, a deputy in the L.A. sheriff's department who's been transporting drugs for a Mexican cartel since he was 17, turns to fellow deputy Hood for help after henchmen of a rival cartel kidnap Jones's pregnant wife, Erin. If Jones doesn't pay the rival cartel's leader, Benjamin Armenta, a million within 10 days as an apology for the trouble he's caused Armenta, Armenta will have Erin skinned alive.

Matt Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son . . . Once Stromsoe was best friends with brilliant, unpredictable Mike Tavarez. That was before Matt joined the San Diego P.D. and Mike left Harvard to run La Eme, the brutal Mexican Mafia, before a vengeance-obsessed Tavarez blew away everything Stromsoe loved, leaving him physically and emotionally broken. Years later, Mike Tavarez is in prison for life,...

Homicide cop Tom McMichael is on the rotation when an 84-year-old city patriarch named Pete Braga is found bludgeoned to death. Not good news, especially since the Irish McMichaels and the Portugese Bragas share a vilolent family history dating back three generations. Years ago Braga shot McMichael's grandfather in a dispute over a paycheck; soon therafter Braga's son was severely beaten behind a waterfront bar - legend has it that it was an act of...

With the horrible remnants of a childhood tragedy forever visible across his otherwise handsome face, Joe Trona is scarred in more ways than one. Rescued from an orphanage by Will Trona, a charismatic Orange County politician who sensed his dark potential, Joe is swept into the maelstrom of power and intimidation that surrounds his adoptive father's illustrious career. Serving as Will's right hand man, Joe is trained to protect and defend his father's...

Roland Ford--once a cop, then a marine, now a private investigator--is good at finding people. But when he's asked to locate Air Force veteran Clay Hickman, he realizes he's been drawn into something deep and dark. He knows war, having served as a Marine in first Fallujah; he also knows personal pain, as only two years have passed since his wife, Justine, died. What he doesn't know is why a shroud of secrecy hangs over the disappearance of Clay Hickman--and...

"Private Investigator Roland Ford hunts for a missing teenager and uncovers a dark conspiracy ... When hired by a beautiful and enigmatic woman to find her missing younger sister, private investigator Roland Ford immediately senses that the case is not what it seems. He is soon swept up in a web of lies and secrets as he searches for the teenager, and even his new client cannot be trusted. His investigation leads him to a secretive charter school,...

"Laguna Beach, California, 1968. The Age of Aquarius is in full swing ... Folks from all over are flocking to Laguna, seeking peace, love, and enlightenment. Matt Antony is just trying get by. Matt is sixteen, broke, and never sure where his next meal is coming from. Mom's a stoner, his deadbeat dad is a no-show, his brother's fighting in Nam --and his big sister Jazz has just gone missing. The cops figure she's just another runaway hippie chick,...

It's two years after the death of Tim Hess, Detective Merci Rayborn's partner, and the father of her child. Merci is trying hard to hold it all together. She and her son live with her father, and she's fallen into a comfortable relationship with Mike McNally, a respected fellow officer. But when a young prostitute is found murdered, and Mike emerges as the prime suspect, Merci's carefully constructed world explodes.