Desperation Reef The Rescue A Thousand Steps   Then She Vanished The Last Good Guy Swift Vengeance The Room of White Fire Crazy Blood Full Measure The Famous and the Dead The Jaguar The Border Lords Iron River The Renegades L.A. Outlaws Storm Runners The Fallen California Girl Cold Pursuit Black Water Silent Joe Red Light The Blue Hour Where Serpents Lie The Triggerman’s Dance Summer of Fear Pacific Beat Little Saigon Laguna Heat Short Stories & Essays

"California classic....Laguna Heat will linger in the memory long after all the puzzle's pieces are finally in place." The Washington Post US LAGUNA HEAT (1985) Laguna, where every day the sun makes a promise the nighttime breaks, while the super-rich live out expensive fantasies in posh beach houses and drown their memories in Cuervo Gold margaritas—where trouble has swept in like a Santa Ana wind, blowing the cover off a world of torture, murder, and blood-red secrets—where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence—with a fiery vengeance—and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery that reaches back across forty years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past, and sweats out a deadly truth in the sweltering Laguna Heat. Read an excerpt. Read reviews.  Jeff Parker on LAGUNA HEAT This was a real labor of love. Five full drafts, five years of writing part-time while I did my newspaper job. Like a lot of young writers I was trying to copy my heros. I ended up with a draft of bad Chandler, a draft of bad Hemingway, a draft of bad Tom McGuane, a draft of bad Garcia-Marquez. So finally I sat down and wrote another draft in pure Jeff Parker. I remember struggling over that first sentence for hours. It finally came: "A perfect morning in a city of perfect mornings; an artist would have worked, a god would have rested." I was proud of that sentence. A little purple for a mystery, but so what? It's a young man's book and young men's books can be good things. It still holds up, I think, the story is strong. St. Martin's US hardcover September 1985 ISBN 0312464347 St. Martin's US paperback reissue August 1993 ISBN 0312952058 Arrow UK paperback November 1987 ISBN 0099492105 HBO movie starring Harry Hamlin and Catherine Hicks, 1987 www.imdb.com  CRITICAL ACCLAIM Slick and elegant.    —Los Angeles Times A dandy detective yarn...the author has a flair for intricate plotting, swift pacing, and well-drawn characters that jump off the page.    —Dallas Morning News California classic....Laguna Heat will linger in the memory long after all the puzzle's pieces are finally in place.    —The Washington Post Red-hot reading...Hypnotic.    —Columbus Dispatch