Collin Wilcox

The New Mexico Connection

DIVDIVTo unlock the secrets of a homicide, Bernhardt must connect with a terrified child/divDIV Dennis tells the police he was sleeping when his wife was killed. Connie stumbled upon a prowler, he says, and paid for the mistake with her life. The police believe his story, but this cold man’s crocodile tears cannot convince Connie’s sister, Janice. She suspects her brother-in-law of a heinous crime, and it will take an unusual investigator to prove her right./divDIV Alan Bernhardt is a theater director in San Francisco who pays his rent with the odd bit of private detective work. Searching for the man who strangled Connie, his biggest obstacle isn’t Dennis, but John—the dead woman’s seven-year-old son. He may have witnessed something crucial on the night of the murder, but this sensitive child is too frightened to speak. Coaxing words out of John will be the toughest assignment of Alan’s directing career, but not half as hard as keeping the boy alive./divDIV/div/div

Silent Witness

Hiding Place

Hastings chases a serial killer who preys on the glitterati. Tony Frazer takes a wide berth when he sees the homeless man. A millionaire playboy, he does not consort with street people, and is in the process of skirting the derelict, eyes averted, when the stranger calls his name. The king of the society pages turns just in time to be struck by three silenced bullets, slumping to his knees and dying there in the gutter. Although witnesses insist the killer was a homeless man, homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings sees signs of a professional at work -- the kind who kills quietly, then disappears into the night. In fact, as Hastings learns, the killer thinks himself a crusader -- a kind of Robin Hood with a pistol -- and he has many more assassinations planned. San Francisco society had better take cover, for this killer has a thirst for blue blood.

Dead Center

Spellbinder

A moonlighting director finds his sideline more dangerous than he expected. Alan Bernhardt is just starting rehearsal when his pager goes off. No one in the small San Francisco theater minds -- they know that to make it on the stage, you have to be prepared to do all sorts of odd jobs off of it. But this director's job is odder than most. He works for Herbert Dancer, head of a boutique private investigation service. A corporate secretary has vanished with a sheaf of valuable documents, and it will take an off-Broadway sensibility to bring her home. Bernhardt is just closing in on the woman and her boyfriend when he learns that she isn't running for a profit, but for her life. To save her from the men who hired him, Bernhardt must find her and protect her -- because his artistic vision does not include blood on his hands.

Bernhardt's Edge

After an ice pick is used for murder in San Francisco, the Washington elite comes down on Hastings. It starts as an everyday fender bender: Two cars collide in heavy evening traffic. But when the police arrive to take statements, the occupants of one car take off running. They leave another man behind, slumped in the backseat, dead of a single stab wound to the chest. Lieutenant Frank Hastings abandons a family dinner to take charge of the scene, which rapidly devolves into chaos. The police corner one of the runners in an abandoned building, capturing him after a standoff. The night's excitement may be over, but the real trouble has yet to start. The dead man is Eliot Murdock, a washed-up political commentator who came west from DC to chase the scoop of his career. As Hastings digs into Murdock's story, he finds himself hemmed in by Washington big shots -- formidable men who have made the mistake of underestimating the strength of one very tenacious cop.

Power Plays

A moonlighting director finds his sideline more dangerous than he expected Alan Bernhardt is just starting rehearsal when his pager goes off. No one in the small San Francisco theater minds—they know that to make it on the stage, you have to be prepared to do all sorts of odd jobs off of it. But this director’s job is odder than most. He works for Herbert Dancer, head of a boutique private investigation service. A corporate secretary has vanished with a sheaf of valuable documents, and it will take an off-Broadway sensibility to bring her home. Bernhardt is just closing in on the woman and her boyfriend when he learns that she isn’t running for a profit, but for her life. To save her from the men who hired him, Bernhardt must find her and protect her—because his artistic vision does not include blood on his hands.

In the underworld of San Francisco, a broken cop searches for his daughter. Seven years ago, Frank Hastings quit on his family. After a half-baked pro football career, he had fallen in love with the bottle and needed to go west. In San Francisco, he got sober, and now he's one of the toughest police officers around, in a city whose counterculture does not make life easy for the men in blue. San Francisco in 1969 is an ugly place, torn apart by drugs and crime and indifference -- and it's about to destroy Hastings's daughter. Claudia comes to town following a boy, a hippie kid who has filled her head with dreams of psychedelic happiness in Haight-ashbury -- and she quickly vanishes into the district's rainbow-colored underbelly. To find the daughter he abandoned, Hastings will push himself closer to the edge than he has in years. His first lead is a gruesome one -- a young male flower child slaughtered in the Haight -- but the bloody trail may lead to Claudia.

The Lonely Hunter

After a concert, a goddess of rock is shot dead backstage. It's the finest performance of Rebecca Carlton's career. The show is dedicated to her father, and the most famous woman in rock does everything she can to honor him. She gives the crowd at San Francisco's Cow Palace arena four encores before finally retiring backstage. The applause is still thundering through the stadium when Rebecca Carlton is shot dead. Lieutenant Frank Hastings has been fighting with his girlfriend when he gets the call. Their idol dead, Rebecca's fans refuse to disperse from the amphitheater, and a riot seems imminent. It takes a special plea from David Behr, the singer's producer and former husband, to convince the audience to go home. As the crowd files out, Hastings turns to the body. Rebecca Carlton may have been a star, but there was nothing glamorous about her murder.

Mankiller

To honor a dying don's last wish, a mob lieutenant searches for hidden diamonds. After seven years ruling his empire from prison, Don Carlo remains as powerful as ever, but his heart is beginning to fail. On the verge of death, he begs his right-hand man, Bacardo, to look after his family. Not his wife and children, the don explains, but Louise and Angela -- his daughter and granddaughter from a beloved mistress who died long ago. To Louise, the don bequeaths one million dollars in diamonds, hidden in a cemetery in a tiny California town. Securing her inheritance will mean mortal danger for Louise, Bacardo, and the private investigator they hire to help them -- a moonlighting director named Alan Bernhardt. Bernhardt understands the risks, but also knows that the theater and the mafia have two things in common: the understanding that a professional is only as good as his word, and that the only way to survive is to act without fear.

Find Her a Grave

For the sake of his lover, Hastings risks his career and chases a stalker For the past few weeks, Lieutenant Frank Hastings’s girlfriend has sensed that she was being watched. They are on their way home from a too-chic party when Hastings spots something moving in the bushes—a shadowy figure who appears to have a gun. He should call for backup; he should stay in the car. But to protect Ann, this detective is willing to risk everything. After a chase, Hastings apprehends the lurker, but what he thought was a gun turns out to be a shotgun mike. Is someone recording Ann? Shut out of the case because it concerns his girlfriend, Hastings focuses on the murder of Flora Esterbrook Gaines—a seventy-year-old woman found murdered in her garage. Greed is the obvious motive, but finding a suspect proves tricky. Hastings divides his energy in a desperate attempt to uphold the law while at the same time protecting his beloved.

Aftershock

Searching for a missing society matron, Hastings finds danger amid the upper crust In a glamorous part of San Francisco, a maid has been strangled to death. Frank Hastings stands over the body, knowing it will be a long day. But before finishing with the crime scene, he gets another call—an officer has been shot, and Hastings must lead the tactical squad. By lunchtime, the boy who shot the officer is dead, and Hastings is hungry for an easy assignment. When he gets it, he’ll soon wish he were back in the line of fire. The wife of a thirty-five-year-old millionaire, Carol Connoly is lovely, fabulous, and not terribly exciting—a perfect star for the society pages. Her only hobby is acting, which she pursues in grubby little black boxes on the city’s fringe. She’s leaving rehearsal one night when she disappears. For this brutish cop, it will take a light touch to rescue the delicate missing lady.

The Disappearance

A John Doe murder spurs Hastings to confront the leader of a Satanic cult For homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings, the day starts with an assassination attempt. During a rally in San Francisco’s Civic Center, someone takes a potshot at the governor, sending the whole of downtown into chaos. Once he has taken control of the scene, Hastings chases down the gunman—a Mexican immigrant with a political bent—and captures him after a tense standoff. Miraculously, no one is killed. But Hastings’s long day is just getting started. He’s barely had time to catch his breath when the call comes in from Noe Valley, where an unidentified man has been found dead on a nude model’s floor. All signs point to a simple case of death by jealousy until a second killing upends the investigation, setting Hastings on a collision course with the charismatic leader of a Satanic cult. For this homicide lieutenant, saving the governor will have been the easy part.

Long Way Down

A pious killer stalks the Tenderloin, hunting streetwalkers in the name of the Lord After years of turning tricks and shooting junk, Amy has reached the end of the line. Heroin has wrecked her body, and her pimp is contemplating cutting her loose when she takes a client to the Bayside Hotel. The john asks her to turn around and undress, and as she slips out of her clothes for the thousandth time, he places his hands around her neck and starts to squeeze. San Francisco Homicide does not rush to investigate the death of a hooker. Although Lieutenant Frank Hastings does his due diligence, he has no expectation of finding Amy’s killer. But when the trail leads him to the son of a famous TV evangelist, he realizes that the case may be even tougher than he expected. Elton Holloway is a fanatically religious young man—but does he love God enough to kill?

The Pariah

An old friend is murdered, and Hastings will do anything he can to avenge her When Frank Hastings knew Meredith Powell, she was a gawky ten-year-old without a care in the world. More than two decades later, she has grown into a stunning beauty—but the gleam in her eye is gone. Over lunch, Meredith confesses that she lives in terror of her emotionally abusive boyfriend, a possessive, rage-filled man named Charles. Hastings, a homicide lieutenant with the San Francisco police department, offers to help her escape. She refuses, and they part ways—unaware that Charles has been watching them the whole time. By the next morning, Meredith has been strangled, her body dumped in the park. The realization that he could have helped her, that he may actually have caused her death, tears Hastings to pieces. Obsessed with revenge, he quickly learns why homicide detectives are prevented from investigating the murders of their loved ones. But he will not rest until Charles is brought to justice—even if it costs him his badge.

A Death Before Dying

A John Doe murder spurs Hastings to confront the leader of a Satanic cult. For homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings, the day starts with an assassination attempt. During a rally in San Francisco's Civic Center, someone takes a potshot at the governor, sending the whole of downtown into chaos. Once he has taken control of the scene, Hastings chases down the gunman -- a Mexican immigrant with a political bent -- and captures him after a tense standoff. Miraculously, no one is killed. But Hastings's long day is just getting started. He's barely had time to catch his breath when the call comes in from Noe Valley, where an unidentified man has been found dead on a nude model's floor. All signs point to a simple case of death by jealousy until a second killing upends the investigation, setting Hastings on a collision course with the charismatic leader of a Satanic cult. For this homicide lieutenant, saving the governor will have been the easy part.

Collin Wilcox

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