Lt. George Hastings is called to the St. Louis riverfront when a hooker turns up dead.  Mostly abandoned, the riverfront leaves few clues for Hastings and his team.  All they can really determine is that the girl was strangled.

The dirl's death is considered tragic, but nothing to worry about until a second hooker turns up dead, this time on the other end of the metropolitan area.  Is there a serial killer loose in the Gateway City?  Hastings and his team of detectives arent' sure, but the one thing they don't want to do is let anything slip to the press.  They don't need panic-stricken citizens.

When a third woman is also found strangled, Hastings is sure a seral killer is on the loose.  However, the third death doesn't quite fit the MO of the other two.  The third woman was not a hooker.  Is it connected, or merely happenstance?

 

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

Potter Mays comes back to St. Louis for the summer after graduating from college and lives with his parents. He spends the time trying to figure out how to navigate friends, life, and love, with baseball and his parents' crumbling marriage thrown into the mix.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

This first book in what appears to be a series finds the rich-but-down-to-earth Kiki learning that her husband George has died naked in a St. Louis motel room.  The reader knows it's murder and not something as lurid as a heart attack during an afternoon delight, but Kiki doesn't.

Kiki not only has to deal with George's two-timing death, but he's left her without a penny to her name.  She has to sell her gold Lexus and find a way to support herself and her daughter, Anya.  It doesn't help that there isn't enough money for the staples, but Anya's private school costs more than Kiki could possibly make in a year.  George's mother is willing to do anything for Anya, but she despises Kiki.

Kiki, a scrapbooker extraordinaire, turns to her hobby for income.  She gets a freelance gig at the store she frequented when she had money.  One of her first jobs is as the instructor at a bridal shower.  Kiki makes a supposedly cutting remark to one of the shower's guests.  When the guest, also an old flame of George's turns up dead, Kiki is the primary suspect.

Nonetheless, Kiki not only has two murders to solve, but someone has broken into the shappby place she and Anya now call home.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

Four brilliant scientists begin the process of cleansing humanity by systematically releasing a chemical to destroy the earth's undesirables. What they don't count on is demented, power-hungry Tony Andrews who has his own plan and weapons to dominate the world.