When the phone rings long after midnight, it spells trouble of the lethal kind for Dallas private eye Ed Earl Burch in a gritty and relentless hard-boiled thriller that races from the gleaming towers of Houston to the decadent charms of New Orleans and the stark desert mountains of the Texas Big Bend country and northern Mexico. Burch is a cashiered homicide detective with bad knees, a wounded liver and an empty bank account. He's been hired to protect an old flame after the disappearance of her husband, a high-flying Houston financier who ripped off his clients, including some deeply...

Ed Earl Burch, a cashiered vice and homicide detective, has his life narrowed down to chasing financial fugitives from the carnage of the oil bust and savings and loan crash that scarred Dallas in the mid-1980s. Throw in the occasional wayward spouse and a ready eye for the next round of bourbon, sipped with a boot resting on the rail of his favorite saloon. He's an ex-jock gone to seed, a private investigator with bad knees and a battered soul. He's trying to keep at bay the memories of three ex-wives, the violent mistakes that got him booted off the force, a dead partner and the killer who...