May 31, 1993
In L.A. to film a documentary about children, San Franciscan Maggie MacGowen (introduced in Edgar-winning Hornsby's Telling Lies ) meets a 14-year-old hooker who calls herself Pisces. Reminded of her own teenaged daughter, Maggie feeds Pisces and her young watchdog friend Sly and finds them beds for the night with a friend who's a social worker. When Maggie's lover, L.A. homicide detective Mike Flint, tells her that Pisces has been murdered, she promises to stay out of the police investigation but determines to find out who the girl was and how her family had lost track of her. The parents of a little girl who disappeared on a family outing 10 years earlier claim Pisces was their missing child, but Maggie and Mike identify the dead girl as the daughter of a wealthy Long Beach playboy. More murders occur while the police search for the killer and Maggie investigates possible connections between the two families. Hornsby gives the readers plenty of action and adult sex in this well-plotted tale that deftly mines suspense from the fears and vulnerabilities of single parents Maggie and Mike--and of her readers.