los angeles

"Psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware is surprised to get the call when well-known TV actress Zelda Chase turns up half-naked, half-mad in the LA's rural Westside. He has little connection to the starlet, save a psychiatric evaluation he performed on her adopted daughter several years ago, a child who has since vanished without a trace and whom Zelda refuses to talk about. When the actress turns up dead a few weeks later without a scratch on her, Delaware calls in police lieutenant Milo Sturgis to help him crack the case--or at least the wall of silence surrounding it. When the body of a second actress turns up with the same mysterious cause of death, Delaware and Sturgis start to wonder--is this a copycat case or a coincidence? When they uncover the death of another actress, a star from another era who vanished decades ago, never to be found, they realize they're facing one of the their most baffling, mind-bending cases yet"--Provided by publisher.

Using the story of homicide victim Bryant Tennelle in the Ghettoside, a word used to describe a South Central Los Angeles neighborhood, the author explores how gangs have taken over neighborhoods in the absence of a trusted legal authority.

A well-known actress has been shot. Shortly afterwards the LA Times receives a letter describing her murder in vivid detail. More killings and e-mails follow and the victims are all Hollywood players. Who could be doing this? And why?.

While private investigator Scarlet Moreno tries to clear her friend, who is a suspect in a murder, and deals with a mysterious detective who thinks she is interferring with the case, her partner, Krista Hart, tracks down the soul witness to a murder just one day before the trial and agrees to work with sexy investigator R.J. Flynn in order to find the person.

Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, and the diverse cast that surrounded him before he was murdered in 1922-- including three beautiful, ambitious actresses, the ruthless founder of Paramount locked in a struggle for control of the film industry, a grasping stage mother, a devoted valet, and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet.

Film editor Margot O'Banion and movie director Max Skull investigate the death of celebrity-chef Robert Madrid when he dies in the same manner as in one of his movies.

FBI Special Agent William Rehder chronicles the lives and crimes of bank robbers from Los Angeles.

Paris Minton, an African-American bookstore owner in 1950s Los Angeles, becomes caught up in a terrifying situation when he agrees to help his friend Fearless Jones track down a missing millionaire.