When recently divorced Josh Greer, a somewhat opinionated and disillusioned former English instructor, takes his usual morning bike ride to the fog-bound Seal Beach pier, he rides into a mystery that will alter the course of his life, a mystery ranging in time from the Polish concentration camps of WW II to 1986, the "current" time for Josh in this story, and geographically from the Long Beach area to Baja California and back. Through his involvement with horrors of the past and contemporary crime, Josh finds a new love, suffers great loss, and achieves his ambition for changing his career.

Set in a small town in Austria in the 1960's, it involves the efforts of Detective Ltnt. Marco Finnand his whodunit-fan wife, Frances, to solve a complicated plot of murder, espionage and intrigue during the Cold War, the central elements of which is a group of ex-Nazis who are striving to re-establish the glory of Third Reich.

Set in a small town in Austria in the 1960's, it involves the efforts of Detective Ltnt. Marco Finnand his whodunit-fan wife, Frances, to solve a complicated plot of murder, espionage and intrigue during the Cold War, the central elements of which is a group of ex-Nazis who are striving to re-establish the glory of Third Reich.

Frances Finn is a college English instructor married to a detective lieutenant in the homicide division of the Los Angeles Police Department. When she is not reading 'great books' for the courses she teaches, her favorite recreation is reading whodunits. This sometimes causes her to take an inordinate interest in her husband's homicide cases, much to the distress of Marco, her husband. Imagine her delight, then, when she is invited by an old college acquaintance, who is quite wealthy, to spend a week at one of the most exclusive spas in southern California, along with some of her other...