Death is everywhere. A child in a playground. A playboy in a cheap hotel. A John Doe in a freight yard. A nanny and her two charges in a church pew.

After twenty-six years in homicide, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza knows death is all in a day's work. But in the heat of a Los Angeles summer, even the predictable becomes bizarre. And for a hard-boiled cop with a decidedly soft centre, nothing is more implausible than human nature - especially when it comes to murder . . .

''A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense''