"​An instant noir classic. Highly recommended." –Best Thrillers The year is 1958. Stan Ellis, a young reporter for a small-town Wisconsin newspaper, can't forget the call he got from a woman who claimed a man convicted of causing a train wreck four years before was falsely imprisoned. After a night of sleeplessness, he searches for the woman hoping to latch on to a big story. When he tracks her down, he finds she is the ex-wife of George Cashman, the train engineer who was operating the train that crashed. She identifies the man she believes sabotaged the train, but refuses to go to the authorities herself out of fear for her safety. She begs Stan to go instead and to ask them to open a new investigation. He agrees, not realizing that he is opening up something bigger and more dangerous than he ever anticipated.

Former engineer Kate Ryan has started her own concierge service when her ex-husband, Jack Doyle, asks her to meet with him and his new client. Ousted from the police department, Jack is struggling to get his new P.I. business off the ground and says he needs Kate’s help. Although hesitant to get involved, Kate’s weakness has always been bad boys in trouble and the desperation in Jack’s voice convinces her to agree to the meeting. One meeting only. On the way to the meeting, Kate is almost hit by a woman who tumbles off the roof of Jack’s twenty-story apartment building. Suicide or murder? The police believe it’s murder and a revenge-seeking ex-partner targets Jack as the number one suspect. But why would he kill his one and only client? A client that Kate soon learns had secrets that even Jack didn’t know, and when revealed, threaten to destroy them both.

Private detectives Matt Singer and Jamal Wade’s plan to sell real estate as a side business explodes into murder when their client is brutally slain in a house they’ve listed for sale. In their search to find the real killer, Matt and Jamal are trapped in a Chinese puzzle box of cover-ups and corruption that goes to the very top of the southern California beach town known as Paradise. Before this case comes to its shattering conclusion they will uncover a man’s crushed skull and shattered bones buried forty years ago ... the Mayor’s illegitimate son who threatens to destroy his father’s reputation ... a political assassination disguised as an accident .. and the most devastating discovery of all – that the truth is far closer to them than they’d thought possible.

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