Lee Martin

Detective Deb Ralston's chance discovery of a dead woman, nine months pregnant, in a ditch leads her into a morass of kidnapping and murder in which she has to fight for her own life and for her son's life as well.

A murdered mail carrier ... two little girls missing ... two classic cars that appear, legally, to be the same one ... a family with fratricide in its past. Will Deb, working with two people she'd prefer not to work with and investigating people she once went to church with, ever be able to sort it out?

Caught unarmed and holding her baby in a bank robbery, Deb Ralston must catch shotgun bandits who quickly turn killers. Harry, whose helicopter crash injuries have ended his career as a test pilot, is left holding the baby while Deb chases the killers.

Deb Ralston must cope with two murders that must be, but cannot be, connected, at the same time that her son's girlfriend is comatose in the hospital. The denouement is a killer.

Readers have loved this book more than all the others in the series. Detective Deb Ralston, 81/2 months pregnant, must retrieve her son Hal, 16, and his girlfriend Lori, 15, after they hitchhike to Los Alamos, New Mexico during spring break. Missing them there, she arrives in Las Vegas, NM to find Hal in jail on suspicion of murder and Lori missing. What can she do now?

Detective Deb Ralston is faced with a classic locked room murder when aged, alcoholic former movie star Margali Bowman, now wife of Texas oil billionaire Sam Lang and mother of Deb's friend Fara, is dead in her chair at the end of a private screening of two of her old movies.

Detective Deb Ralston's personal and professional lives interact badly, as she copes with foot surgery and the return of her sister, a drug addict and prostitute now ridden with AIDS, and with the suicide of a teenage girl, the rape of a six-year-old, and the overly-friendly Mr. Washington.

Deb Ralston must find a serial killer. Most of the suspects and victims belong to Mensa, which accepts only the superintelligent, and Deb is sure they can all think circles around her. Only her son-in-law believes she's just as smart as they are.

Olead Baker had opportunity, means, motive, and a record of schizophrenic violence. But Detective Deb Ralston, who was a mother before she was a cop, just can't believe that he is guilty of shotgunning five family members including his beloved four-year-old sister and stomping the cat to death. Things really get out of hand when Deb's daughter Becky falls in love with Olead.