The Lt. Hastings Mysteries Series

Investigating an ex-cop’s death, Hastings gets drawn into a family conspiracy It was just after he made lieutenant that Frank Hastings told Charlie Quade to resign. They had known each other at the academy, and Quade was a rotten cop from day one. Dogged by rumors of corruption, Quade left without protest, eking out a living doing security work. When Hastings hears Quade has been shot dead, he doesn’t blink. The only surprise is the place the ex-cop died. Alexander Guest is one of the wealthiest lawyers in the city, and Hastings can’t understand why he would hire a thug like Quade to protect his grandson from the father-in-law who wants to kidnap him. When Quade’s body is found, the grandson is long gone, and the father-in-law is the natural suspect. But Hastings knows better than to trust the rich, and he refuses to accept the easy answer.

Hastings chases a serial killer who preys on the glitterati Tony Frazer takes a wide berth when he sees the homeless man. A millionaire playboy, he does not consort with street people, and is in the process of skirting the derelict, eyes averted, when the stranger calls his name. The king of the society pages turns just in time to be struck by three silenced bullets, slumping to his knees and dying there in the gutter. Although witnesses insist the killer was a homeless man, homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings sees signs of a professional at work—the kind who kills quietly, then disappears into the night. In fact, as Hastings learns, the killer thinks himself a crusader—a kind of Robin Hood with a pistol—and he has many more assassinations planned. San Francisco society had better take cover, for this killer has a thirst for blue blood.

A senator’s life is in danger—and anyone in San Francisco could be a killer Senate majority leader Donald Ryan is a kingmaker, with the power to make or break presidencies, and the ability to reshape the country with a flick of his pen. He is also a very sick man, recovering from a heart attack that must be kept secret at all costs. But when a series of death threats jeopardizes his planned return to public life, the FBI calls in San Francisco police lieutenant Frank Hastings to find the would-be assassin. He has one week until the senator’s next public appearance—and hundreds of thousands of possible suspects. Because Ryan’s recent heart attack is considered a state secret, Hastings is forced to withhold crucial details from his fellow detectives. Any degree of stress could stop the senator’s fragile heart, which means that even if a bullet misses, the sound of the  gunshot might be enough to kill him. To save the lawmaker, Hastings may have to put himself in the line of fire.

Hastings chases a serial killer whose deranged letters hold a city for ransom The doctor comes through his front door as he always does, a bundle of mail in hand. He’s about to walk up the stairs when the bullet passes through his back, puncturing his heart and leaving him dead in his front hall. By the time Lieutenant Frank Hastings arrives, rigor mortis has set in, and the doctor’s body rolls easily away from the wall. Pinned beneath him is a note that begins, “Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief . . .” Pay $100,000, writes “the Masked Man,” or a lawyer will be the next to die. There are too many lawyers in San Francisco to protect them all, and as Hastings and his team hunt for the Masked Man, the city is whipped into a frenzy of fear. As the killer’s demands mount, the homicide department starts to wonder—after the merchant is killed, will the chief of police be next?

A pious killer stalks the Tenderloin, hunting streetwalkers in the name of the Lord After years of turning tricks and shooting junk, Amy has reached the end of the line. Heroin has wrecked her body, and her pimp is contemplating cutting her loose when she takes a client to the Bayside Hotel. The john asks her to turn around and undress, and as she slips out of her clothes for the thousandth time, he places his hands around her neck and starts to squeeze. San Francisco Homicide does not rush to investigate the death of a hooker. Although Lieutenant Frank Hastings does his due diligence, he has no expectation of finding Amy’s killer. But when the trail leads him to the son of a famous TV evangelist, he realizes that the case may be even tougher than he expected. Elton Holloway is a fanatically religious young man—but does he love God enough to kill?

A gay man’s murder leads Hastings to a blackmail plot Charles Hardaway climbs the hill to his house, immediately missing the bright lights and conversation of the bar and dreading the return to his lover, who is slowly dying of AIDS. But Hardaway’s self-pity is interrupted by a pipe-wielding stranger, who crushes his skull before slipping away. It’s nighttime in the Castro, and another gay man has been sent to his grave. Homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings is tempted to write the killing off as another heinous instance of gay-bashing, but witnesses say the killer was alone, and seemed to know the victim. Digging into Hardaway’s past, Hastings finds evidence that he was a blackmailer who pushed one of his targets to the breaking point. In a neighborhood where disease and hatred claim more and more lives every day, it seems one man has been done in by plain old-fashioned greed.

A John Doe murder spurs Hastings to confront the leader of a Satanic cult For homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings, the day starts with an assassination attempt. During a rally in San Francisco’s Civic Center, someone takes a potshot at the governor, sending the whole of downtown into chaos. Once he has taken control of the scene, Hastings chases down the gunman—a Mexican immigrant with a political bent—and captures him after a tense standoff. Miraculously, no one is killed. But Hastings’s long day is just getting started. He’s barely had time to catch his breath when the call comes in from Noe Valley, where an unidentified man has been found dead on a nude model’s floor. All signs point to a simple case of death by jealousy until a second killing upends the investigation, setting Hastings on a collision course with the charismatic leader of a Satanic cult. For this homicide lieutenant, saving the governor will have been the easy part.

Hastings investigates a murder among a set of wealthy adulterers By the time Haney and the woman get to her apartment, they are so drunk they can hardly get through the door. They undress and begin to fool around, but before they make it to the bedroom, they have an argument. Haney is about to leave when the woman starts to laugh at him. He spins around and slugs her as hard as he can. His head is beginning to clear by the time he makes it home. He’s just sober enough to notice the glint of a dagger before it’s buried in his gut. Haney’s wife finds his body at the foot of the stairs. She calls the police, but cannot tell them the truth about the evening—that she and her husband were both in other people’s beds. Lieutenant Frank Hastings has no trouble interrogating criminals, but untangling this web of marital lies will be one of the trickiest cases of his career.

A surgeon is gunned down in the street—but who is the woman who wanted him dead? Brice Hanchett is a brilliant surgeon, and those who work alongside the man consider him either godlike or devilish. After years of success, he has begun to believe his own legend, and soon goes too far—toying not just with life and death, but with the heart of every woman he meets. He has a wife and a mistress, as well as the attention of all the nurses in the hospital. One of them is waiting for him when he goes out to his Jaguar, a gun in her hand. It takes only two shots to remind Brice Hanchett that even the finest surgeon cannot cheat death. Investigating the case falls to Lieutenant Frank Hastings and the boys in San Francisco Homicide. Learning that the killer was female should narrow the search, but with a victim like Hanchett, any woman—in scrubs or out—could be a suspect.

An old friend is murdered, and Hastings will do anything he can to avenge her When Frank Hastings knew Meredith Powell, she was a gawky ten-year-old without a care in the world. More than two decades later, she has grown into a stunning beauty—but the gleam in her eye is gone. Over lunch, Meredith confesses that she lives in terror of her emotionally abusive boyfriend, a possessive, rage-filled man named Charles. Hastings, a homicide lieutenant with the San Francisco police department, offers to help her escape. She refuses, and they part ways—unaware that Charles has been watching them the whole time. By the next morning, Meredith has been strangled, her body dumped in the park. The realization that he could have helped her, that he may actually have caused her death, tears Hastings to pieces. Obsessed with revenge, he quickly learns why homicide detectives are prevented from investigating the murders of their loved ones. But he will not rest until Charles is brought to justice—even if it costs him his badge.

On a fishing trip with his estranged son, Hastings comes under attack Lieutenant Frank Hastings checks his gun at airport security so he can meet his son the moment the boy gets off the plane in San Francisco. After a year apart, he finds Darrell to be as moody and withdrawn as any other teenager, and prays that a fishing trip will bring them closer together. He is unaware that he and Darrell are about to experience the sort of bonding that only terror can provide. Before setting off on their vacation, they arrive at Hastings’s apartment to find that a prowler has been lurking, but managed to escape before the police got there. When they reach the lakeside cabin, the watcher is already waiting, ready to take revenge on Hastings by targeting his child. To survive the ordeal, Hastings will have to trust Darrell in ways he never expected, and Darrell will have to become a man.

In the underworld of San Francisco, a broken cop searches for his daughter Seven years ago, Frank Hastings quit on his family. After a half-baked pro football career, he had fallen in love with the bottle and needed to go west. In San Francisco, he got sober, and now he’s one of the toughest police officers around, in a city whose counterculture does not make life easy for the men in blue. San Francisco in 1969 is an ugly place, torn apart by drugs and crime and indifference—and it’s about to destroy Hastings’s daughter. Claudia comes to town following a boy, a hippie kid who has filled her head with dreams of psychedelic happiness in Haight-Ashbury—and she quickly vanishes into the district’s rainbow-colored underbelly. To find the daughter he abandoned, Hastings will push himself closer to the edge than he has in years. His first lead is a gruesome one—a young male flower child slaughtered in the Haight—but the bloody trail may lead to Claudia.

After an ice pick is used for murder in San Francisco, the Washington elite comes down on Hastings It starts as an everyday fender bender: Two cars collide in heavy evening traffic. But when the police arrive to take statements, the occupants of one car take off running. They leave another man behind, slumped in the backseat, dead of a single stab wound to the chest. Lieutenant Frank Hastings abandons a family dinner to take charge of the scene, which rapidly devolves into chaos. The police corner one of the runners in an abandoned building, capturing him after a standoff. The night’s excitement may be over, but the real trouble has yet to start. The dead man is Eliot Murdock, a washed-up political commentator who came west from DC to chase the scoop of his career. As Hastings digs into Murdock’s story, he finds himself hemmed in by Washington big shots—formidable men who have made the mistake of underestimating the strength of one very tenacious cop.

In the shadows of the Golden Gate Bridge, Hastings investigates a glamorous murder The killer is long gone from the crime scene when he realizes his mistake. It went perfectly, right until the end. He lured Lisa to the oceanfront park, entered her car on the passenger side, shot her twice, and escaped without being stained by her blood. He took the gun with him, as planned—but he forgot her purse, the crucial detail meant to make the crime look like a robbery. It was a simple mistake, but it could cost him everything. It does not take long for Lieutenant Frank Hastings to notice the purse—nor is he slow to notice the victim’s beauty. Lisa Franklin was a self-described courtesan, a would-be poet who paid her rent by lavishing affection on San Francisco’s rich and powerful. As Hastings combs through her client list, he is confronted with one vital question: Which captain of industry was foolish enough to leave the purse behind?

In the underworld of San Francisco, a broken cop searches for his daughter Seven years ago, Frank Hastings quit on his family. After a half-baked pro football career, he had fallen in love with the bottle and needed to go west. In San Francisco, he got sober, and now he’s one of the toughest police officers around, in a city whose counterculture does not make life easy for the men in blue. San Francisco in 1969 is an ugly place, torn apart by drugs and crime and indifference—and it’s about to destroy Hastings’s daughter. Claudia comes to town following a boy, a hippie kid who has filled her head with dreams of psychedelic happiness in Haight-Ashbury—and she quickly vanishes into the district’s rainbow-colored underbelly. To find the daughter he abandoned, Hastings will push himself closer to the edge than he has in years. His first lead is a gruesome one—a young male flower child slaughtered in the Haight—but the bloody trail may lead to Claudia.

Searching for a missing society matron, Hastings finds danger amid the upper crust In a glamorous part of San Francisco, a maid has been strangled to death. Frank Hastings stands over the body, knowing it will be a long day. But before finishing with the crime scene, he gets another call—an officer has been shot, and Hastings must lead the tactical squad. By lunchtime, the boy who shot the officer is dead, and Hastings is hungry for an easy assignment. When he gets it, he’ll soon wish he were back in the line of fire. The wife of a thirty-five-year-old millionaire, Carol Connoly is lovely, fabulous, and not terribly exciting—a perfect star for the society pages. Her only hobby is acting, which she pursues in grubby little black boxes on the city’s fringe. She’s leaving rehearsal one night when she disappears. For this brutish cop, it will take a light touch to rescue the delicate missing lady.

Investigating a grisly murder in the park, Lieutenant Hastings finds that the victim had some secrets of her own San Francisco’s first murder of the year takes more than two weeks to come, but when it does, it’s ugly. June Towers is seventeen, a high school senior just six months from graduation, when the police find her dead in the park. She’s lovely, in the patchwork jeans and rainbow palette favored by the city’s youth, but her hair is matted with blood. Was the murderer a mugger, a rapist, a serial killer—or someone the young girl called a friend? In search of answers, Lieutenant Frank Hastings digs into June’s past and finds that she was many things to many people. Her mother thought she was a good girl—a fine student with a future—but to a certain class of her peers, June Towers was something else altogether. Hastings has little time to come to grips with this strange personality before another good girl turns up dead.

Hastings investigates a murder among a set of wealthy adulterers By the time Haney and the woman get to her apartment, they are so drunk they can hardly get through the door. They undress and begin to fool around, but before they make it to the bedroom, they have an argument. Haney is about to leave when the woman starts to laugh at him. He spins around and slugs her as hard as he can. His head is beginning to clear by the time he makes it home. He’s just sober enough to notice the glint of a dagger before it’s buried in his gut. Haney’s wife finds his body at the foot of the stairs. She calls the police, but cannot tell them the truth about the evening—that she and her husband were both in other people’s beds. Lieutenant Frank Hastings has no trouble interrogating criminals, but untangling this web of marital lies will be one of the trickiest cases of his career.

A pair of murders leaves Hastings torn between following his orders and listening to his gut After nearly a decade as a San Francisco cop, Frank Hastings is becoming something of a stranger to kindness. He feels perfectly at home in the Draper household—a rundown Victorian not far from the streets on which he grew up—where a social worker has been beaten to death by a man hiding in the bushes. The crime looks like a mugging, but something in the husband’s manner tells Hastings there are secrets hidden in this shabby middle-class home. He’s closing in on the answers when a double homicide in posh Pacific Heights draws his attention away. Fearing bad publicity, his superiors tell him to drop everything and focus on this new killing, but Hastings can’t get his mind off the death of Susan Draper. As he divides his time between the two murders, Hastings finds that for a man at home with cruelty, kindness can be terrifying.

After a concert, a goddess of rock is shot dead backstage It’s the finest performance of Rebecca Carlton’s career. The show is dedicated to her father, and the most famous woman in rock does everything she can to honor him. She gives the crowd at San Francisco’s Cow Palace arena four encores before finally retiring backstage. The applause is still thundering through the stadium when Rebecca Carlton is shot dead. Lieutenant Frank Hastings has been fighting with his girlfriend when he gets the call. Their idol dead, Rebecca’s fans refuse to disperse from the amphitheater, and a riot seems imminent. It takes a special plea from David Behr, the singer’s producer and former husband, to convince the audience to go home. As the crowd files out, Hastings turns to the body. Rebecca Carlton may have been a star, but there was nothing glamorous about her murder.

Investigating an ex-cop’s death, Hastings gets drawn into a family conspiracy It was just after he made lieutenant that Frank Hastings told Charlie Quade to resign. They had known each other at the academy, and Quade was a rotten cop from day one. Dogged by rumors of corruption, Quade left without protest, eking out a living doing security work. When Hastings hears Quade has been shot dead, he doesn’t blink. The only surprise is the place the ex-cop died. Alexander Guest is one of the wealthiest lawyers in the city, and Hastings can’t understand why he would hire a thug like Quade to protect his grandson from the father-in-law who wants to kidnap him. When Quade’s body is found, the grandson is long gone, and the father-in-law is the natural suspect. But Hastings knows better than to trust the rich, and he refuses to accept the easy answer.

Searching for a missing society matron, Hastings finds danger amid the upper crust In a glamorous part of San Francisco, a maid has been strangled to death. Frank Hastings stands over the body, knowing it will be a long day. But before finishing with the crime scene, he gets another call—an officer has been shot, and Hastings must lead the tactical squad. By lunchtime, the boy who shot the officer is dead, and Hastings is hungry for an easy assignment. When he gets it, he’ll soon wish he were back in the line of fire. The wife of a thirty-five-year-old millionaire, Carol Connoly is lovely, fabulous, and not terribly exciting—a perfect star for the society pages. Her only hobby is acting, which she pursues in grubby little black boxes on the city’s fringe. She’s leaving rehearsal one night when she disappears. For this brutish cop, it will take a light touch to rescue the delicate missing lady.

For the sake of his lover, Hastings risks his career and chases a stalker For the past few weeks, Lieutenant Frank Hastings’s girlfriend has sensed that she was being watched. They are on their way home from a too-chic party when Hastings spots something moving in the bushes—a shadowy figure who appears to have a gun. He should call for backup; he should stay in the car. But to protect Ann, this detective is willing to risk everything. After a chase, Hastings apprehends the lurker, but what he thought was a gun turns out to be a shotgun mike. Is someone recording Ann? Shut out of the case because it concerns his girlfriend, Hastings focuses on the murder of Flora Esterbrook Gaines—a seventy-year-old woman found murdered in her garage. Greed is the obvious motive, but finding a suspect proves tricky. Hastings divides his energy in a desperate attempt to uphold the law while at the same time protecting his beloved.

A senator’s life is in danger—and anyone in San Francisco could be a killer Senate majority leader Donald Ryan is a kingmaker, with the power to make or break presidencies, and the ability to reshape the country with a flick of his pen. He is also a very sick man, recovering from a heart attack that must be kept secret at all costs. But when a series of death threats jeopardizes his planned return to public life, the FBI calls in San Francisco police lieutenant Frank Hastings to find the would-be assassin. He has one week until the senator’s next public appearance—and hundreds of thousands of possible suspects. Because Ryan’s recent heart attack is considered a state secret, Hastings is forced to withhold crucial details from his fellow detectives. Any degree of stress could stop the senator’s fragile heart, which means that even if a bullet misses, the sound of the  gunshot might be enough to kill him. To save the lawmaker, Hastings may have to put himself in the line of fire.