From the Publisher
Earl Emerson's acclaimed series about Seattle private investigator Thomas Black is much beloved by readers and critics. And with justification. (These novels, running the gamut from THE RAINY CITY to the just-issued CATFISH CAF, are among my all-time favorite detective tales, and I'm not just saying that because I'm Earl's editor.) But I don't know any other crime novelist who amasses such fervent praise from his peers. It would be a crime to call Earl Emerson merely a ''writer's writer.'' But there sure are a lot of talented authors who revere him. To wit . . .
Aaron Elkins: ''In every book he tries something new, and he always comes up a winner. In the best tradition of American crime fiction, Emerson is a master of witty dialogue; clever, complex plotting; and lucid, meaty prose.''
Robert Crais: ''Earl Emerson writes with the richness and grace of a poet, evincing a quality of phrase and nuance that elevates the genre.''
Ann Rule: ''Earl Emerson and Thomas Black only get better and better! Earl Emerson has taken his place in the rarefied air of the best of the best!''
'Nuff said.
--Joe Blades, Associate Publisher
From the Inside Flap
''Earl Emerson is one of the best of the new private eye writers.''
--Chicago Sun-Times
Something made Melissa Nadisky flee her husband and their daughter. The note she left behind paints a picture of a woman haunted by a private hell. Now Thomas Black's friend, Kathy Birchfield, wants him to find Melissa--before she's consumed by her secret, terrifying demons.
Yet the straightforward missing persons case turns deadly when a killer starts silencing key witnesses in Black's investigation. But there's no turning back--especially after the sometimes-psychic Kathy tells him about her terrifying vision: a weeping little girl and a pit full of human bones. . . .
''Emerson is right up there with the best in the genre when it comes to bringing the elements of mystery to a rolling boil.''
--Mostly Murder