Showing results by author "Timothy Hallinan" in All Categories

Simeon Grist is about to face off against his mostterrifying adversary - a madman who's setting fire to the homeless. As Simeon isdrawn into the case, very much against his will, he realizes that the "Incinerator" has a huge advantage. Somewhere, years ago, the two of them met,and the Incinerator has been nursing hatred and resentment for years. Now, ashelpless people burst into flame on Skid Row, Simeon has to scour thewastelands of Los Angeles, and his own past, looking for the face of a killer.

Simeon Grist takes a case that leads him to the phantom neighborhoods of Los Angeles' lost children. Missing 13-year-old Aimee Sorrell ran all the way from Kansas to be a star. But Aimee's trail soon leads Simeon to the city morgue, the first stop on a perilous journey to find out what happens to America's lost children when they go looking for love in all the wrong places.

Simeon Grist knows LA inside and out - the sex for sale, the chic seductions, every rip-off from City Hall to Venice. So when he's hired by a Hollywood recording company to shadow one Sally Oldfield, suspected of embezzlement, Grist discovers she's entangled in the Church of the Eternal Moment - a million-dollar religious scam built around a 12-year-old channeler and the voice of a man who has been dead for a millennium.

For a fee so big he can't turn it down, Simeon Grist is hired to watchdog the kind of guy he'd usually prefer to throw through the nearest window. Toby Vane is the golden boy of prime-time television, whose gee-whiz smile and chiseled features mask a dark secret that would take the shine off for his millions of adoring female fans: every now and then he beats up a woman, and almost any woman will do.

It's everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley's top "executive crook", sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, thereby ensuring that the hitter doesn't know who hired him. Then one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper listing the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can turn to for help is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.