Central Kansas Library System

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,...

A crime reporter with ESP tackles a double homicide In a San Francisco apartment building, a young woman is found strangled beside a piano player with a broken neck. He's a nobody-a dreamer with little talent and no future-but she is Roberta Grinnel, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the Bay Area. Stephen Drake, crime reporter for the Sentinel, feels nothing when he looks at their corpses, and this is a troubling fact. For Drake is a psychic,...

A mob boss is dead, and his widow wants Drake to help him rest in peace Dominic Vennezio is found on the floor of his beachside love nest, murdered on a Sunday night. It looks like an ordinary mob hit, part of a routine power struggle with the East Coast Outfit, but Vennezio's widow has other suspicions. Her marriage to the kingpin had been strained ever since he began taking his secretary for weekends at the beach house, but even now, she feels a...

A pair of murders leaves Hastings torn between following his orders and listening to his gut After nearly a decade as a San Francisco cop, Frank Hastings is becoming something of a stranger to kindness. He feels perfectly at home in the Draper household-a rundown Victorian not far from the streets on which he grew up-where a social worker has been beaten to death by a man hiding in the bushes. The crime looks like a mugging, but something in the husband's...

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,...

After an ice pick is used for murder in San Francisco, the Washington elite comes down on Hastings It starts as an everyday fender bender: Two cars collide in heavy evening traffic. But when the police arrive to take statements, the occupants of one car take off running. They leave another man behind, slumped in the backseat, dead of a single stab wound to the chest. Lieutenant Frank Hastings abandons a family dinner to take charge of the scene, which...

Investigating an ex-cop's death, Hastings gets drawn into a family conspiracy It was just after he made lieutenant that Frank Hastings told Charlie Quade to resign. They had known each other at the academy, and Quade was a rotten cop from day one. Dogged by rumors of corruption, Quade left without protest, eking out a living doing security work. When Hastings hears Quade has been shot dead, he doesn't blink. The only surprise is the place the ex-cop...

In the underworld of San Francisco, a broken cop searches for his daughter Seven years ago, Frank Hastings quit on his family. After a half-baked pro football career, he had fallen in love with the bottle and needed to go west. In San Francisco, he got sober, and now he's one of the toughest police officers around, in a city whose counterculture does not make life easy for the men in blue. San Francisco in 1969 is an ugly place, torn apart by drugs...