One azure San Francisco summer afternoon, Viktor Rastovich, Russian immigrant, gangster, and single father of one, receives this phone call: "Daddy, I've been kidnapped." The kidnapper's demands are at first strange, at times even ridiculous. But when Rastovich fails to comply with a particularly unreasonable demand, the kidnapper sends the distraught father a toe, which he identifies as his daughter's. At this point Rastovich, in spite of his virulent prejudice against African-Americans, hires Harley David, a private detective, to find his daughter. David, in turn, enlists his friend, Andrew...

San Francisco is shocked when the incinerated body of John "HammerJack" Marteau, the linebacker for the Fortyniners, is found in his burned out SUV at the bottom of a ravine. Andrew MacCrimmon has other problems-he is recovering from a four month bout of morbid depression following a near-fatal gunshot wound, and his marriage is disintegrating-but he is drawn into the case when a chance encounter with Marteau's dental tech convinces him the body is not Marteau's, that this is a life insurance scam. If so, whose body is it? And who's involved? In the end, the conspirators strongly resent his...

After Andrew MacCrimmon's wife, Karen, leaves him for the sixth and, apparently the last time, he takes up with Claudia Franchini, once known as "Abigail Durant," a sensuous but shady woman pathologically obsessed with him since their fiery affair, twenty-four years earlier. When Claudia complains she is being stalked by a man named Shally Behr, a gigolo living with a wealthy old woman in her apartment building, MacCrimmon checks him out. He finds that, not only was Behr a person of interest in two homicides, but he is carrying on an affair with Barbara Millman, the wife of the wealthy...

Thomas Waine has a job for Edward Riss: participate in the fake kidnapping of his wife, Solange. Waine plans to pay a huge ransom then declare bankruptcy thus avoiding taxes and massive debts. Andrew MacCrimmon becomes involved after meeting Riss's wife while working on another case. She tells him she fears for her husband's life. MacCrimmon reluctantly looks into it in spite of marital problems of his own. The fake kidnapping goes off as planned but Solange disappears with the entire ransom, which is not part of the plan. When Riss's body shows up in Golden Gate Park MacCrimmon goes on the...

When Dr. Andrew MacCrimmon surprises his wife, Karen, in bed with her personal trainer, he takes a long drive to clear his head. In the desert outside of Lone Pine, he is mugged and left to die. Bob Seibel, a bar owner, rescues him, and, in return, MacCrimmon tends bar for Bob while he and his wife go on vacation. Senora Lena Montoya, the runaway wife of a Tijuana drug lord, meets MacCrimmon in the bar and over the next weeks falls in love with him. Her husband finds out, and has MacCrimmon taken to Tijuana to be tortured and killed. He and Senora Montoya--who has been badly beaten by her...

Someone is killing San Francisco's homeless at the rate of one a week. When one of them, a man Dr. Andrew MacCrimmon has befriended, is killed, he says enough is enough. Having nothing to lose-his wife, Karen, has left him to live with a lawyer-he goes on the streets himself as a homeless man to lure in the killers. After weeks of boredom, humiliation, and physical discomfort he succeeds-with fatal consequences.

A young woman shows up at Andrew MacCrimmon's country home claiming her mother, a friend of his, has been murdered Then in rapid sequence he gets a letter saying his wife, Karen, has left him for another man; his friend Herb Dodds-Boughty is murdered; and a man breaks into his house to assassinate him. MacCrimmon finds two common denominators: an old lover named Abby Durant, a woman erotically obsessed with him for over twenty-years; and a hundred acre parcel of land south of Santa Rosa he owns that Abby has been desperate to get her hands on. There are more deaths-he was seconds away from...

Adam Forsythe has been in prison for five-years for a murder Andrew MacCrimmon is convinced he didn't commit. When MacCrimmon re-opens the case looking for the real murderer, Adam's ex-wife, Lorie; his brother, Damian; even Adam himself, discourage his interference. Why Adam would want to stay in prison whets MacCrimmon's curiosity. As he digs deeper into the case, someone's efforts to discourage him become lethal.

After Dr. Andrew MacCrimmon exposes Aron Woode's homicidal rampage and sends him into hiding Woode vows bloody revenge. When an innocent bystander is murdered with a straight razor, MacCrimmon realizes a family member of his was the actual target. He arranges protection for his family and goes on the hunt for Woode. Woode, stalks MacCrimmon's daughter, Dre, planning to kill her, but instead falls in love with her. He approaches her in disguise and asks her out, but she rejects him. More determined on revenge than ever Woode hires two Guatemalans to kill MacCrimmon but he shoots and wounds...

May 8th, Shelby Worthen dining with her husband, Stanley, goes to the restroom, but never returns. She disappears without a trace. Six weeks later, June 17th, a battered corpse wearing Shelby's shirt and bracelet washes up on the rocks below Bodega Head. That same day MacCrimmon's wife, Karen, and his son, Alex, disappear, leaving signs of a hasty departure, but no message. Two days later, Lena Montoya, the beautiful widow of a Mexican drug lord, who is obsessed with MacCrimmon (for reasons he's never understood) shows up at his Nob Hill home. MacCrimmon, always suspicious of coincidences,...