Sheltered but precocious Robbie Segal has run away from home, a small brick house on an unexceptional street. Her desperate mother has asked Harry Stoner to find her. What begins as an ordinary missing-persons case, a case that should be settled without any violence at all, suddenly changes in an impossibly terrifying way.

Now Harry is on the trail of a shockingly brutal act of murder, because it might lead him to a runaway girl, because it had become part of the job, because something deep and indelible inside him simply has to.

The professor was an eccentric old bird, and his daughter was a delicate flower. So how could Harry Stoner suspect the snake pit of hatred and greed he was walking into that winter day when he agreed to find a missing document for Professor Daryl Lovingwell?

Following Sarah Lovingwell to a subversive group landed Stoner face-to-face with a towering ex-marine making a new career of murder. Before Stoner could catch his balance, one of the two Lovingwells was dead, and snow-steeped Cincinnati was cut through the center by a highway of blood and violence. Harry Stoner was in the middle of it–holding the pieces of an explosive puzzle of lies.

Blackmail, adultery, and evil–an evil you’d never associate with a sensitive little man in tweed, until you saw good people die before your eyes.

To PI Harry Stoner, Ira Lessing had everything to live for: money, a beautiful wife, good friends, and a reputation that would do credit to a saint. But Lessing disappeared one hot July night, and Stoner knew in his gut that the man was dead. Years on the street had taught Stoner that no man is what he seems. Peeling away layers to the bone would reveal what had become of Lessing. It would lead Stoner into the underbelly of Cincinnati, into the places where desire and violence meet, into the darkest byways of the human heart where his own values would be tested to the bloody limit, by acts of love–and murder.

She was perfect. She smelled of toothpaste, talc, and something sweeter than lilacs. And in that crazy season of autumn, when Cincinnati was ablaze in the blood-red color of fall, Kate Davis made Harry Stoner feel old, and a little in love too. But for Harry Stoner those were only two more reasons that Kate shouldn’t have anything more to do with this case. Because what had started with a twisted act of vandalism in the local library had led Kate and Harry, paired together, on a twisting path to a brutal, unsolved murder and to a pumped-up, speeded-up psycho.

A phone ringing after midnight means trouble, especially in private eye Harry Stoner’s business. This time the 1:30 call is trouble, all right. A motel clerk wants somebody to pick up the loser registered as Harry Stoner who just tried to kill himself. When the real Stoner gets to the Encantada Motel, he finds his old college roommate nearly dead and too many memories still alive. It’s a suicide attempt that forces Stoner back into his own past, where a pretty woman, a brutal murder, and the bitter remnants of the sixties drug culture make Stoner’s future look rosy…like flowers on a grave.

Cincinnati Cougars’ Billy Parks was All-Pro … and missing. Harry Stoner’s job was to find him and get him into shape for the season. But Billy’s photo told Stoner he didn’t like the man … or the shape he was in. The eye revealed a killer mentality–a player who crushed, mangled, and sacked with pleasure. Billy’s disappearing act might be part of a contract dispute or something far more deadly. For Stoner suspected that Billy had become a mean machine who went on scoring in a sordid world of drugs and violence, where death hit with a blind-side tackle … and life lasted only until the final cut.

Mason Greenleaf–good teacher, good friend, fond lover–vanishes from his Mount Adams home one hot summer afternoon, leaving a haunting mystery behind him. For his fellow teachers, former students, and friends, his disappearance is inexplicable and tragic. For his lover, Cindy Dorn, it is a cruel blow that shakes the very foundations of her world. She calls Harry Stoner for help. Soon after, Greenleaf turns up dead in a sleazy hotel. The police call it a suicide–Stoner believes there’s more to the story. As Stoner delves into the apparent suicide, disturbing questions surface about Greenleaf’s past, questions about his sexual life. Greenleaf was bisexual, after the brutal Lessing case of several years past, a case that led Stoner to cover up an act of deliberate murder, Harry is not eager to probe into another gay man’s violent death. But he can’t walk away from Cindy Dorn, a woman to whom he is undeniably drawn. For Harry, an investigation that starts as a matter of conscience rapidly turns into a test of character and, through Cindy, a confrontation with what has been missing in his own life.

Detective Harry Stoner has seen too much of the seamy side of life not to notice the tarnish on Los Angeles’ glitter or the gritty reality behind the never-never land of television’s biggest daytime soaps. A detergent manufacturer, already begrimed by scandal and rumor, doesn’t want his image further muddied by the mysterious death of the head writer on the daytime series he sponsors. So it’s up to Stoner to find out what really happened that sunny August weekend when Quentin Dover took his last shower.

What Stoner uncovers is a slick world of high finance and low morals, all powered with cocaine, a sexy blond widow turned on by booze and boys, the broken lives of the men and women who create America’s TV fantasies, and the perfect setting for greed, jealousy, and murder.

Clients never tell the whole story. Harry Stoner had taken a snowy drive to Cincinnati psychiatrist Phil Pearson’s mansion to hear the tale of daughter Kirsten–emotionally disturbed and missing. But the doctor left out the parts about his first wife’s suicide and his second wife’s bedroom eyes that were already chasing the winter cold from Stoner’s blood. That’s why Stoner suspected the search for Kirsten could take a kinky turn. He’d seen teens driven by desperation before–the dark things hidden deep in troubled minds become too much for flesh and blood to bear. And Kirsten’s secrets were tied to an act so chilling that its reemergence could tear lives apart, unleashing passions so violent that even the hard heart of a seasoned PI could break or be stopped forever.

Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: a loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch. He’s unable to look away from the world’s corruption–and unable to avoid trying to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She’s not very pretty or bright or engaging … she doesn’t have much to offer at all. So when she disappears, it’s all the more disturbing for Stoner–who knows what can happen to girls that nobody wants. And he’s got a sick hunch that he knows what happened to Cindy Ann, right across the Cincinnati border. Stoner’s hunches are almost always on the money–and they rarely feature happy endings.

Detective Harry Stoner has seen better days. It’s the middle of January and business is slower than a crawl. Curled up in his office with a paperback mystery, a little classical music on the radio, and a bottle of Scotch, Harry’s ready to cut his losses and hibernate until spring. The only problem is that Harry’s been living off Visa credit and Christmas cash, and the money faucet is beginning to run dry.

Enter Leon Tubin, an odd little man with worn trousers but a pocketful of cash. Leon’s a collector of vintage LP recordings and he’s sure another member of his music-listening group is ripping him off. They’re all jealous of his record library, especially his Wagner-loving rival, Sherwood Loeffler. It seems to be nickel-and-dime stuff to Harry but Leon insists that the recordings in question are worth about ten thousand dollars. Convincing arguments are one thing, an advance of five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills is another. Harry takes the case.

After interviews with Leon’s music-loving cronies, Harry is struck by their obsessive audio compulsions but almost positive that when it comes to grand theft, they are all on the up-and-up. It’s Leon’s blond bombshell of a wife, Sheila, who has Harry doing a double take. What’s a woman like her doing with a wimp like Leon? Sheila confides that Leon saved her years before from her days as a swizzle-stick lounge singer, and out of loyalty and true love she’d do anything to protect him. But what does Sheila’s past have to do with a bunch of stolen records? A bizarre trail of clues emerges but, in the end, Harry finds his case won’t be completely resolved even though he’s heard the fat lady sing over and over again.