Hard-bolied crime fiction in the style of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. No white wine and cheese. Robert Dawson, police reporter for the Washington Herald in the nation's capital, is a former Marine with a checkered past your mother probably wouldn't like. He probably woulodn't care. One night Dawson and the police find, floating in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canlal through the city's glitzy Georgetown, a White House aide with his arms amputated and his face peeld like a peach. They suspect foul play. Shortly afterward, other oddly mutilated cadavers appear. Dawson is drawn into the...