All Private Investigator Tom Wells longed for was oblivion, the bender to end all benders courtesy of a bottle of Bacardi 151. But when a childlike illegal immigrant begs Major Tom's assistant to investigate a murder—only to be gunned downed in the street moments later—he gets something else entirely. Major Tom gets the case that will take him to the limit—or send him into the void his addled psyche craves. Nikki Reed, his lovely but alienated assistant, isn't one to let things go. Nikki is convinced that the death of their client is somehow connected to the murder of a lowlife found floating in the San Francisco Bay; so despite Tom's skepticism, the two embark on a quest which takes them into the underbelly of Los Angeles, where smalltime con artists, women of God, an ultra-rich philanthropist and a rogue sniper all factor into a mystery that deepens at every turn. Hot on the pair's heels are the Feds, who tell Major Tom to stand down. But when Nikki is shot and left for dead, Tom realizes she means more to him than his well-cultivated cynicism, and he marches headlong into the fog-shrouded Marin Headlands for a shattering confrontation with a killer who is much better than he. Read an excerpt