Assume nothing—that's the touchstone for every homicide investigation Detective Davie Richards undertakes. She approaches her latest case the same way, determined to learn as much about the victim as she does about the killer. But there's nothing about thirty-four-year-old Sara Montaine or her death that makes sense. Was Sara a saint caring for her dying husband or a gold-digger with a sketchy background? Did she commit suicide or was she murdered? Before her marriage, Sara lived comfortably without any obvious source of income, unusual for an orphan raised in foster care. As Davie digs deeper, she unearths Sara's troubled past and a viper's nest of villains who are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden.

Living in L.A. is like no other place on earth. And for recently divorced, thirty-year-old Tucker Sinclair, whose current domestic arrangements include sharing her just-north of Malibu Beach cottage with her actress mother, Pookie, and Pookie's annoying, twenty-pound Highland terrier, Muldoon, life can be positively surreal. A senior manager on the fast track for a partnership at Aames & Associates, Tucker is doing everything from financial face-lifts to red-ink bypasses, when a certain neurologist comes by with what could be the deal-maker of her career. All she has to do is write a simple business plan that will entice investors to fund Dr. Milton Polk's grandiose expansion schemes. Then, just as the project starts to take off, her files on Polk disappear, the good doctor himself vanishes, and Tucker finds herself accused of bilking L.A.'s moneymen out of millions of dollars. Add a washed-up corpse on Venice Beach and a sexy detective sniffing for clues and Tucker is suddenly scrambling to save her reputation and career. With a bunch of pissed-off investors on her tail, she hits the road in her silver Porsche-a legacy from her ex-trying to figure out who set her up. Out there somewhere is someone who aims to swindle her out of something far more precious than her job. To outfox an unscrupulous murderer gunning for the highest stakes, Tucker will have to sharpen all her skills to survive the deadly jungle of spreadsheets and business models. For if she fails, this deal-maker will be a done deal.

LAPD homicide detective Davie Richards is called to an airport-parking garage to investigate the shooting of a retired U.S. Army Ranger. Missing personal items point to a robbery, but Davie suspects a more sinister motive when she notices only one military dog tag around the ranger’s neck. Could the murderer have taken the other as a memento of the kill? As Davie unravels baffling clues, one murder becomes two and a pattern begins to emerge. Racing to save the killer’s next victim, Davie is led to a shocking twist that challenges her physical and emotional endurance and tests the bonds of brotherhood and friendship.

“Readers will discover Smiley’s nimble talents for understated wit, unsentimental affection, and the emotional wounds that drive the best of cops to buck the system in search of justice.”—Kim Fay, Edgar Award finalist for The Map of Lost Memories Most cops spend their entire careers without firing a weapon in the line of duty. LAPD Homicide Detective Davie Richards is an outlier, a cop who killed a suspect to save another officer’s life. While she waits for the police commission to rule on the shooting, she’s called out to probe the gruesome homicide of Anya Nosova, a nineteen-year-old Russian beauty whose body is found in the Los Angeles sewer system. With her own case in limbo, Davie knows that any mistakes in the investigation could end her career. As she hunts for the murderer, somebody begins to hunt her . . . and it’s no longer just her job that’s on the line. Praise:“Smiley knows the LAPD from the inside out and writes with the...