Sometimes it’s the things you don’t do that come back to haunt you, just as surely as some questions are best left unanswered. When “Leo” is the last word a dying stranger speaks, the Seattle private eye launches himself into a search for answers. Not only does the dead man have a connection to Leo’s past, but he was also worth millions—and some very dangerous people know it. Before long, Leo is caught between warring factions in a high-stakes game of mayhem and murder, and his search for answers becomes a quest for justice. Turns out, finding the truth is far more painful than Leo ever imagined, and the price for uncovering it just might be his life. The eighth irreverent Leo Waterman mystery from acclaimed author G.M. Ford.
At the end of an especially raucous day at his neighborhood bar, private eye Leo Waterman is surprised to see his old flame, Rebecca Duval, walk in the door. But King County's medical examiner is here on business, not pleasure. Two dead bodies, covered by an old coat that once belonged to Leo's father, have turned up in the trunk of a car. The only thing that seems to connect the men is a controversial local church and its charismatic pastor.
With help from Rebecca and surveillance expert Carl Cradduck, Leo begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together. While a pair of goons do their best to chase him off the case, Leo painstakingly retraces the victims' final days, charting their unusual search for redemption-from a downtown homeless encampment to suburban McMansions to the shores of Salvation Lake. There Leo must confront an opponent hell-bent on retribution in order to get to the twisted truth about the killings.
Between the end of his marriage and the excessive force complaints against him, Detective Sergeant Mickey Dolan is running out of chances. When a powerful and connected city councilman reports that his wife and two daughters have disappeared, Dolan is assigned the case—knowing full well that his career is riding on the outcome. While investigating, Dolan meets Eve Pressman and her remarkable daughter, Grace. Gifted with the ability to bring people out of comas, Grace is reluctant to be thrust into the public eye but determined to help those in need. Eve and Grace may know where Councilman Royster’s family is and the terrible truth that sent the three of them into hiding in the first place. Now, Dolan faces the toughest choice of his career: is he still a good cop if he has to do the wrong thing?
G.M. Ford's unconventional private detective, Leo Waterman, jolts the p.i. scene like a double shot of espresso from a sleek Seattle coffee bar. Aided by his band of scruffy irregulars -- "the Boys," a team of residentially challenged connoisseur of inexpensive spirits -- Leo remains Seattle's most unorthodox p.i. Now, SLOW BURN ignites the fuse on the most combustible entry in the waterman cannon.
Anticipating disaster, a prestigious global restaurant convention hires Leo as Special Security Officer. His assignment: monitor the movements of two adversarial steakhouse competitors whose "beef" has previously made for some nasty confrontations and a food critic who's caught in between the warring factions. Leo sends the Boys off to shadow all three parties and report back to him. But even the simplest of plans can casade into catastrophe. And Leo soon finds himself served up as the prime suspect in a murder...realizing that both his life and career are at stake.
Having transformed a gaggle of residentially-challenged devotees of cheap alcohol into a crack surveillance team, Leo Waterman has a soft spot for society's downtrodden. When a homeless woman says she's the mother of a deceased rock idol, Leo investigates her claim, thereby embroiling his dissolute deputies, "the Boys", and himself in a life-threatening pursuit of the truth.
Heck needs you. He's in Swedish. Room 222. -Marge. The note was waiting for Leo Waterman in the grime on top of his refrigerator. Heck was Henry Sundstrom, a third-generation Seattle fisherman and a major supporting player in the movie of Leo's life. Marge had come into the picture twenty-three years ago and changed everything. She and Heck had fallen in love immediately and there was no room for anyone else in their lives. Now she needed something and she was calling Leo; it was her way. It was his way to respond. Heck was dying, struck by a truck in a bad part of town at an hour when no decent man should be there: He was trying to discover the reasons behind his son's death in a boating accident on his honeymoon. Neither Heck nor Marge had approved of Allison, and neither believe that she's dead. Marge wants closure ... and she wants a resolution to far too many inexplicable incidents, answers to questions that the police are willing to leave open. The answers are not simple and the paper trail leads Leo and his motley associates to a small town with a huge secret. From Seattle to Wisconsin, the puzzle twists and turns, tangling the present with a past so tragic that the final truth will leave the reader gasping.
Leo Waterman was born and bred in Seattle, Washington, and his father had contacts that ranged from the highest offices to the lowest dives. Those contacts are useful in Leo's pursuit of a profession as a private investigator. Of course, as a not-completely-rehabilitated hippie, Leo does go about things his own way. His best legmen (and women) are folks he knows from the kinds of bars the tourist board doesn't acknowledge, and they live wherever they can - including the streets. It makes sense: They're virtually invisible. With all that going for him, it's no wonder that Waterman receives the kind of call he can't refuse from aging mobster Tim Flood. Tim's granddaughter, Caroline, is involved in something and she won't talk about it. Beautiful, willful, and her grandfather's kin, she's been able to get around anyone he's sent after her. So, Leo gets his marching orders: Bring Caroline home. Safe. Unfortunately, the crowd she's running with has its own agenda ... and Caroline really does want to do something about the environment...
Hard living collects its fair share of casualties, but somehow Leo Waterman avoided becoming one of them. Destined for a trust fund that was taking too damn long to kick in, he spent years eking out a living in Seattle as a private investigator. Along the way he managed to survive countless run-ins with murderers, drug dealers, and jealous wives. But when Rebecca, the love of his life, dumped him to marry someone else...that was a different story. Still, he took it like a man, eventually collecting his family money and slipping into semi-retirement - until the day an unwelcome visitor brings him the worst possible news. Rebecca has vanished and no one, not even her manipulative, overprotective mother, can find a trace of her. Together with his band of informers and sidekicks (in truth a rather motley crew of homeless drunks and reprobates), Leo wades back into the game, determined to save Rebecca once and for all. But her trail is a twisted one, thick with deception and depravity that winds from the rain-swept streets of Seattle to the murky depths of the great North Woods. The stink of it all seems to emanate from none other than Rebecca's new husband, Brett Ward, whose tangle of lies will cast Leo into the path of a ruthless gang that will stop at nothing - not even murder - to protect what's theirs.
