The bestselling author of Laguna Heat follows his recent success, Pacific Beat, with this intricate tour de force of atmospheric style, hard-boiled suspense, and dark insight into the human heart.Its ingredients are the passions of a small group of intimates, a hot California summer, an Orange County killer who is massacring entire families, and a disturbing detail: The police, unaccountably, are keeping the killings under wraps.Its unsettling point of view is the troubled conscience of Russ Monroe, Laguna Beach's cop-turned-crime-writer, who stumbles onto a murder scene that looks exactly like the others. The eerie difference is, he knew this victim all too well, yet apparently all too little - and the police aren't even investigating. Something is maddeningly wrong.Knowledge is dangerous here.And Russ - catastrophically for everything he holds to be true - is about to partake.