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Luisteren én lezen

Collin Wilcox

Searching for a missing society matron, Hastings finds danger amid the upper crust

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—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’ll soon wish he were back in the line of fire.

The wife of a thirty-five-year-old millionaire, Carol Connoly is lovely, fabulous, and not terribly exciting—a perfect star for the society pages. Her only hobby is acting, which she pursues in grubby little black boxes on the city’s fringe. She’s leaving rehearsal one night when she disappears.

For this brutish cop, it will take a light touch to rescue the delicate missing lady.

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

The Lt. Hastings Mysteries

The Disappearance

Investigating a grisly murder in the park, Lieutenant Hastings finds that the victim had some secrets of her own

San Francisco’s first murder of the year takes more than two weeks to come, but when it does, it’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’s lovely, in the patchwork jeans and rainbow palette favored by the city’s youth, but her hair is matted with blood. Was the murderer a mugger, a rapist, a serial killer—or someone the young girl called a friend?

In search of answers, Lieutenant Frank Hastings digs into June’s past and finds that she was many things to many people. Her mother thought she was a good girl—a fine student with a future—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.

Hiding Place

A John Doe murder spurs Hastings to confront the leader of a Satanic cult

For homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings, the day starts with an assassination attempt. During a rally in San Francisco’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—a Mexican immigrant with a political bent—and captures him after a tense standoff. Miraculously, no one is killed. But Hastings’s long day is just getting started.

He’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’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.

Long Way Down

For the sake of his lover, Hastings risks his career and chases a stalker

For the past few weeks, Lieutenant Frank Hastings’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—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?

Shut out of the case because it concerns his girlfriend, Hastings focuses on the murder of Flora Esterbrook Gaines—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.

Aftershock

Hastings chases a serial killer whose deranged letters hold a city for ransom
The doctor comes through his front door as he always does, a bundle of mail in hand. He’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’s body rolls easily away from the wall. Pinned beneath him is a note that begins, “Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief . . .” Pay $100,000, writes “the Masked Man,” or a lawyer will be the next to die.
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’s demands mount, the homicide department starts to wonder—after the merchant is killed, will the chief of police be next?

Doctor, Lawyer . . .

After a concert, a goddess of rock is shot dead backstage

It’s the finest performance of Rebecca Carlton’s career. The show is dedicated to her father, and the most famous woman in rock does everything she can to honour him. She gives the crowd at San Francisco’s Cow Palace arena four encores before finally retiring backstage. The applause is still thundering through the stadium when Rebecca Carlton is shot dead.

Lieutenant Frank Hastings has been fighting with his girlfriend when he gets the call. Their idol dead, Rebecca’s fans refuse to disperse from the amphitheatre, and a riot seems imminent. It takes a special plea from David Behr, the singer’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.

Mankiller

A senator’s life is in danger—and anyone in San Francisco could be a killer
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’s next public appearance—and hundreds of thousands of possible suspects.
Because Ryan’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’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.

Stalking Horse

A pious killer stalks the Tenderloin, hunting streetwalkers in the name of the Lord

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.

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’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—but does he love God enough to kill?

The Pariah

A gay man’s murder leads Hastings to a blackmail plot

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’s self-pity is interrupted by a pipe-wielding stranger, who crushes his skull before slipping away. It’s night time in the Castro, and another gay man has been sent to his grave.

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’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.

Calculated Risk

On a fishing trip with his estranged son, Hastings comes under attack

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.

Before setting off on their vacation, they arrive at Hastings’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.