A Kate Delafield Mystery

Tough and demanding LAPD Detective Kate Delafield is the leader of the investigation into a high-rise office building murder. The case is intriguing but routine - until Kate interviews the only witness, Ellen O'Neil. When Ellen O'Neil took her new job over the objections of her lover, she wasn't expecting to become embroiled in murder. The curiosity that Kate Delafield rouses is equally unexpected. But it is never far from Ellen's mind that she is merely a name on an interview sheet to the tight-lipped detective.

Dory Quillin, nineteen years old, her white-blonde hair ruffled by the gentle breezes of a June evening, lies dead in the parking lot of a lesbian bar. Her bewildered silver-blue eyes stare beseechingly into the mind and soul of the woman who kneels beside her: LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield. The investigation is far from a simple matter. Kate uncovers shocking facts about the brief life of the murdered young lesbian.

On Thanksgiving Day, LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield and her partner, Ed Taylor, are called to an apartment building on the edge of Beverly Hills to investigate a premeditated and pitiless murder. No one appears particularly grieved by the shocking end to old-time Hollywood director Owen Sinclair. Surely not three other tenants of the Beverly Malibu, who worked in the motion picture industry during the blacklist years and loathed Sinclair.

Young Teddie Crawford is dead from multiple stab wounds in a restaurant kitchen awash with blood. LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield is relentless in her pursuit and capture of his killer. But bringing that killer to trial imperils Kate's professional standing and personal privacy—and her belief in the justice system to which she has devoted her life.

Driven by insatiable curiosity about a past Kate has adamantly refused to share, Aimee has maneuvered her into attending what Aimee views as an innocuous reunion of the men and women with whom Kate served as a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam twenty-five years ago. The past resurfaces with a vengeance. First, shots are fired into their hotel room. Then a savage murder is committed by someone attending the reunion. Kate finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation in a city where she has no jurisdiction, confronted by detectives who view her with contentious suspicion.

Kate Delafield is at war. With LAPD's Department of Internal Affairs which is challenging her conduct during an arrest gone disastrously wrong. With the police psychologist who holds in her hands the power to keep Kate off the job—and is exercising it.

A reclusive old man has been brutally slain at the La Brea Tar Pits. The unusual investigation could uncover the truth of humanity's ancient past, and at the same time expose the corruption and violence of the present. And everyone involved—from an alluring scientist with a dark secret to a treacherous CIA officer with his own agenda—is suspect.

LAPD Detective Kate Delafield has a new, iron-willed female lieutenant—a tough new partner who may turn out to be a much-needed ally. She also has a dangerous new case.

In this long-awaited new installment of the legendary Kate Delafield mystery series, Kate is forced to confront her most formidable opponent: herself. Kate Delafield is in a world of trouble. Five months into mandated retirement from the LAPD, her long term on-again off-again relationship with Aimee Grant is off again. She's become hopelessly dependent on the only substance that can drown her pain over Aimee - and the illness of her best friend. She is lost without her police career and beset by terrifying dreams.

Four years retired, Kate Delafield has a twenty-year-old case roaring back on her, a case from which she had recoiled, withdrawn herself. A homophobic homicide far too reminiscent of a recent, haunting, life-changing investigation of the murder of a young lesbian at the Nightwood Bar. Now she suffers in secret, knowing she is personally culpable for the mishandling of evidence. The key decisions about the conduct of her life and her police career that have brought her directly to this time, this place in the high desert where she has taken herself.