A Hard Light

By Wendy Hornsby

Maggie tries to unravel an art theft that began during the Vietnam War. During the chaotic last act of the Vietnam War, three people tried to preserve the art from the French colonial museum in Da Nang. As Viet Cong forces overwhelmed the South Vietnamese, Bao Ngo, Khanh Nguyen, and Minh Tam sped south, in trucks laden with all the treasures of eighteen hundred years of Vietnamese history. Although one truck disappeared, those three made it to Saigon just as the Americans pulled out. Minh and Khanh escaped on the last helicopter, Minh waving goodbye to Bao, the cousin he expected he would never see again.

Decades later, Khanh is at home in Los Angeles when Bao reappears, gun in hand. He ransacks her house and disappears. Maggie MacGowen, documentary filmmaker, looks into the incident, interviewing Khanh and Minh, who disappear just after she turns off her camera. She presses on, determined to understand this decades-old mystery, no matter how dangerous the past might be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784085704

Wendy Hornsby

Wendy Hornsby (b. 1947) is the Edgar Award–winning creator of the Maggie MacGowen series. A native of Southern California, she became interested in writing at a young age and first found professional success in fourth grade, when an essay about summer camp won a local contest. Her first novel, No Harm, was published in 1987, but it wasn’t until 1992 that Hornsby introduced her most famous character: Maggie MacGowen, documentarian and amateur sleuth. Hornsby has written seven MacGowen novels, most recently The Paramour’s Daughter (2010), and the sprawling tales of murder and romance have won her widespread praise. For her closely observed depiction of the darker sides of Los Angeles, she is often compared to Raymond Chandler. Besides her novels, Hornsby has written dozens of short stories, some of which were collected in Nine Sons (2002). When she isn’t writing, she teaches ancient and medieval history at Long Beach City College.