by Ray Nayler
First published 2001
Lance Bailey stands at the edge of his career and his life. The aging private investigator has spent years tracking the killer who murdered his one true love, and now the trail leads into the Mojave Desert. Between Los Angeles and Las Vegas stretches a wasteland where predators dump their victims, where outcasts cook methamphetamine in hidden shacks, where everything broken and unwanted finds its final resting place. Nuclear waste mingles with mining slag and abandoned cars. Hikers discover skulls and rusted guns, remnants of cowboys who sought shade under Joshua trees a century ago and never rose again. Police unearth one body only to find two more beneath it. In this graveyard of discarded lives, Lance must navigate a conspiracy that grows deadlier with each step. His body betrays him, his mind fractures with nightmares, but his quarry stays one step ahead. The world fragments around him as he races against time and his own mortality to solve his final case.
Genres: american-fiction, mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Mojave Desert, Los Angeles, Las Vegas
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
136 pages · Paperback · Tta Press
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, murder