CSI: Miami Series

Christmas in Miami the city is wrapped in its own unique festive cheer, and countless children breathlessly await the arrival of Santa Claus. Except this year there are hundreds of Santas. Miami has been invaded by the Red Menace. An annual gathering of hundreds of red-suited, jolly old fat men and women swarm over the city, comical and annoying, until one of them turns up dead. In what should be a time of goodwill to all the Miami-Dade Crime Lab finds that what appears to be the simplest of crimes hides darker motives. Who would want to kill Santa? Who would go to such lengths to conceal the identity of a victim that they would decapitate him and remove both his hands? And how does a simple convenience store robbery suddenly spiral into an international incident of kidnapping and murder?

Lieutenant Horatio Caine of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab is called in to investigate a mysterious death at an organic eatery. He finds the victim, waiter Phillip Mulrooney, bent over a stainless steel toilet, his clothing shredded. There are burn marks on his face and cell phone fragments scattered around, and his shoes are blown off his feet. Incredible as it seems, the initial evidence points to death by lightning strike. The staff at The Earthly Garden believe Mulrooney's death is an act of God -- punishment for straying from the Vitality Method, their spiritual philosophy that inner beauty can be revealed by nurturing the physical and spiritual. The only philosophy Lieutenant Horatio Caine believes in is justice for the victim -- and he'll move heaven and earth to get it.

The Miami Dade Crime Lab is called in to examine the body of a young woman who has washed ashore on an island in Florida Bay. Lieutenant Horatio Caine is quick to identify the probable murder weapon: a shark dart used by the navy as part of an experimental program to kill enemy divers. However, during the autopsy, Doctor Alexx Woods finds that the true cause of death was drowning; the dart was used postmortem. When another mangled body of a woman is discovered, Caine begins to suspect the worst. The unusual and violent nature of the crimes bears all the hallmarks of an organized serial killer -- sexual predation, a great deal of preparation and a disturbingly distorted worldview. Now, the lieutenant and his team must race to piece together all the clues to stop the murderer before they can strike again.

Lieutenant Horatio Caine leads a crack team of forensic scientists who investigate crimes amid the tropical surroundings and cultural crossroads of Miami. Together, they collect and analyze the evidence to expose the truth and to bring justice to those who often cannot speak for themselves: the victims. FLORIDA GETAWAY Thomas Lessor left Las Vegas for Miami to get away from it all -- in fact, he felt certain he was going to get away with murder. But he was wrong, and the Las Vegas PD soon contacted Miami with a warrant for his arrest. Hot on his trail, the Miami CSIs are called to the scene of his abandoned car...a car that's been abandoned in spirit but not in body. And on a pleasant and secluded Miami beach, a young couple is about to make a gruesome discovery....

A young man is killed in Miami's Bicentennial Park. Two shots -- one a through-and-through -- and on his body a quantity of coke is found. It would be easy to mark down his killing as gang related or a drug deal gone bad. While the simplest explanation may be the best, it does not follow that it is always true. There is something about the angles of the bullets that killed him that are off...and why take his gun and money, and leave the drugs? And who would have the skill to carry all of this out without leaving a path in the grass? A serial bomber has been spreading terror across the western states. The FBI has been on his trail for years, but always one day too late, leaving frustrated agents to sweep through bombed sites, looking for leads. A search of an Albuquerque motel and its Dumpsters has led the agent-in-charge to Miami, hoping this time he will not need the services of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab. A bomb set in a house kills a doctor and all of his family. If this is the same bomber, he has changed his pattern. Why? Does he feel more comfortable here in Miami? Lieutenant Horatio Caine is going to find him, and make sure the only comfort the bomber finds is offered by the state -- in jail.

This first in a series of novels based on the hit TV show CSI: Miami, details all-new cases that the popular forensic investigators must solve. Lieutenant Horatio Caine leads a crack team of forensic scientists who investigate crimes amid the tropical surroundings and cultural crossroads of Miami. Together, they collect and analyze the evidence to expose the truth and to bring justice to those who often cannot speak for themselves: the victims. Crime boss Kurt Wallace was fighting to hold his vast crime empire together—until a few well-placed bullets ended the struggle. As a host of dangerous "business interests" move in to seize control of Wallace's piece of the Miami underworld, Caine's CSIs must piece together the evidence to discover who was responsible for the crime that all of Miami had a motive to commit.

As winter's hold deepens in the dark days of February, Miami's hotels fill to the bursting point. Cruise ships flock to the busiest port in the world as people desperate for warmer climates board these behemoths of the seas. People with too much time and money fill the clubs. In every other jurisdiction, as its citizens are driven indoors, there is a downturn in crime but not in Miami, as the members of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab can attest. Stretched to the breaking point, Lieutenant Caine is called to what appears to be a failed international terrorist incident: a botched arms-for-Afghani-heroin exchange. The scene is littered with bodies and blood droplets identified as being from one Abdus Sattar Pathan. Once before, Pathan managed to escape being charged in the murder of a Federal agent. This time Caine has him. Except Pathan has an iron-clad alibi: he was miles away, on stage doing his magic act. Horatio is convinced that Pathan and the international terrorist known as the Hare are one and the same. Can Caine prove it before the Hare puts his deadly plan into motion?