Celebrated foreign correspondent, Adam Streeter is found shot dead in his elegant LA condo. The cops say suicide - so does Streeter's blind, teenage daughter. But the company that insured his life thinks otherwise and sends in crack death-claims investigator Dave Brandstetter.
And so begins a case that will take Brandstetter into the most dangerous game in the world - played for high political stakes in a Central American arena by desperate men. As he pushes deeper into the case, he unearths three more deaths seemingly linked to Streeter's. Little by little, Brandstetter narrows the hunt for the killer - only to find he himself has become the hunted, his enemy more powerful and ruthless than any he has faced before.
'The Brandstetter stories develop strongly with a striking quality of measured calm'
- Sunday Times
'After 40 years Hammett has a worthy successor'
- The Times
'Spare and stylish'
- The Financial Times
'The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today'
- Los Angeles Times
'Unusual in two respects. One is that the insurance investigator, though ruggedly masculine, is thoroughly and contentedly homosexual. the other is that Hansen is an excellent craftsmen, a compelling writer.'
- New Yorker