When Mike Gavin rolled the corpse in the Union Station, it was an act of desperation. For Mike hadn’t eaten in three days and the only remnant of human emotion he had left was hunger.So when a few minutes later Mike stepped on a train in the dead man’s hat and coat, carrying his bag and using his ticket, he also stepped into the dead man’s world. At least for the duration of the trip, he would have to be the late Gerald Welsh.
Only after the dead man’s suitcase had been opened, did Mike realize what kind of a horrible person Gerald Welsh had been, but by then it was too late. The train was off for Denver and already the Grim Reaper was knocking at his compartment door. He’d stolen to live, but what he’d swiped was an appointment with death!
It’s 1955 in Neon City, USA. The vice syndicate’s slimy tentacles stretched everywhere through the corrupt city and only reporter Steve Ashe knows the dark story behind the multi-million dollar traffic in dope and white slavery. And because he knows…he’s a walking dead man.
The ocean tide washed the body up on the beach. It was a woman’s nude body, without a face or a left hand. And when Steve Ashe discovered the remains of the once-beautiful redhead, he vowed to find her killer and hound him to the gallows. But to do it, Ashe has to tangle with a crooked private eye, an insanely jealous photographer, and a kill-crazy police chief…
Johnny Maguire is a struggling lawyer who falls into a passionate affair with the widow of one of his clients. She disappears… supposedly taking a suicide dive into the ocean. But Maquire doesn’t buy it and starts searching for her…a quest that pits him against the mob and spirals into a twisted story of sex and murder.
Johnny Maguire hadn’t visited Chinatown in a long time, and now he wasn’t there for the tourist attractions. Not that the Chinese Keyhole didn’t have plenty to offer—if you liked that sort of thing. Behind its pseudo-Oriental facade, the strip club provided unusual entertainment for its off-beat clientele… and the performers were weirder than those who paid to watch them. There was the statuesque blonde dancer for instance. She left nothing to the imagination of her audience, and she was beautiful: but she just wasn’t Johnny’s type. And he wasn’t crazy about her partner, either—the muscular but mincing ballet dancer who carried a vicious-looking whip and didn’t hesitate to use it.
All FIVE novels in the gritty, hard-boiled series featuring two-fisted lawyer Johnny Maguire.