Tim Wohlforth – författare

In this novel of nine closely related episodes, we join Crip and Henrietta, as unlikely a detective duo as ever hit the streets.

Crip and Henrietta aren''t your typical California private eyes. For one thing, Crip''s real name is Tom Bateman. His sometime sidekick with body piercings and spiked green hair, Henrietta, calls him "Crip" because he''s in a wheelchair. When she isn''t mocking him, Henrietta grows marijuana, hangs with jailbirds, and brings in cases that reek of trouble—and weed—at first sniff. Henrietta''s idea of a favor? Well, a couple of crazed fighting dogs need a home.

In these episodes, we watch Crip and Henrietta''s relationship grow as both characters struggle to bridge chasms of bitterness and mistrust. The private eye business in California hasn''t gotten this kind of a reworking since Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler planted their gumshoes onto these mean streets.

A shape bends over a drink at the end of the bar in Big Emma''s on Oakland''s Jack London Square, looking like a bundle of black clothes someone has left on the barstool. Full red lips that match brightly dyed hair are the only source of color, as if an artist had begun to colorize her just before she walked out of frame in a ''40s noir movie. Her name is Susan, and she is there to hire PI Jim Wolf to find her husband''s killer—and to protect her from a man called Red. Wolf takes her case, but Susan is soon murdered. Then an attempt is made on Wolf''s life … and the hunter becomes the hunted. With the help of two very different but important women in his life, Lori Mazzetti, his former lover whom he can no longer live with but can''t seem to survive without, and Connie Hernandez, an investigative reporter for the Oakland Tribune, Wolf sets out to track Red down. Now it''s personal. The bullets fly and the blood flows, but Wolf is just getting started. Like the alpha predator of his namesake, private investigator Jim Wolf is the last guy you''d ever want to see behind you, following in your tracks—or at your door.

A rusted, dented, dirty-white Toyota passes under a streetlight in a small town in Southern Oregon. A hulk of a man exits, leans on a cane, and walks crab-like down the sidewalk toward Ted Whitaker. It''s Harry, Ted''s best friend from the ''60s, a man he hasn''t seen in thirty years. Surely this meeting isn''t mere coincidence, so what does Harry want with Ted?

Ted soon discovers that Harry, once an extreme radical, has become an ecoanarchist and terrorist. He has come to recruit Ted to join his plot to release a virulent form of smallpox with no known antidote. There''s no chance of that happening, so it''s up to Ted to stop Harry.