Except for the Bones

By Collin Wilcox

A murder witness flees to California for protection, taking refuge in the theater.

Diane Cutler is half drunk and half stoned when she sees her stepfather carrying the body out of the house. She and her boyfriend look on, horrified, as real estate tycoon Preston Daniels loads his dead mistress into the car. Unable to resist their curiosity, they follow him, and watch as he dumps the poor woman's body in the rocks and sand of the Cape Cod landfill. Diane doesn't know what to do with this dark knowledge, but her boyfriend sees it as an opportunity for blackmail -- and is nearly beaten to death for it.

Terrified of her stepfather, Diane flees to the West Coast to ask theater director and sometimes private detective Alan Bernhardt for help. Alan is unavailable, but recommends his girlfriend and protégé, Paula, for the job. Paula may be an excellent actress, but playing PI will prove to be one of the most dangerous performances of her career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784089054

Collin Wilcox

Collin Wilcox (1924–1996) was an American author of mystery fiction. Born in Detroit, he set most of his work in San Francisco, beginning with 1967’s The Black Door—a noir thriller starring a crime reporter with extrasensory perception. Under the pen name Carter Wick, he published several standalone mysteries including The Faceless Man (1975) and Dark House, Dark Road (1982), but he found his greatest success under his own name, with the celebrated Frank Hastings series. Hastings, a football player turned San Francisco homicide detective, made his debut in The Lonely Hunter (1969), and Wilcox continued to follow him for the rest of his career, publishing nearly two dozen novels in the series, which concludes with Calculated Risk (1995). Wilcox’s other best-known series stars Alan Bernhardt, a theatrical director with a habit of getting involved in behind-the-scenes mysteries. Bernhardt appeared in four more books after his introduction in 1988’s Bernhardt’s Edge.