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Hastings chases a serial killer who preys on the glitterati Tony Frazer takes a wide berth when he sees the homeless man. A millionaire playboy, he does not consort with street people, and is in the process of skirting the derelict, eyes averted, when the stranger calls his name. The king of the society pages turns just in time to be struck by three silenced bullets, slumping to his knees and dying there in the gutter. Although witnesses insist the killer was a homeless man, homicide lieutenant Frank Hastings sees signs of a professional at work—the kind who kills quietly, then disappears into the night. In fact, as Hastings learns, the killer thinks himself a crusader—a kind of Robin Hood with a pistol—and he has many more assassinations planned. San Francisco society had better take cover, for this killer has a thirst for blue blood.
Collin Wilcox
Collin Wilcox (1924–1996) was an American author of mystery fiction. Born in Detroit, he set most of his work in San Francisco, beginning with 1967’s The Black Door—a noir thriller starring a crime reporter with extrasensory perception. Under the pen name Carter Wick, he published several standalone mysteries including The Faceless Man (1975) and Dark House, Dark Road (1982), but he found his greatest success under his own name, with the celebrated Frank Hastings series. Hastings, a football player turned San Francisco homicide detective, made his debut in The Lonely Hunter (1969), and Wilcox continued to follow him for the rest of his career, publishing nearly two dozen novels in the series, which concludes with Calculated Risk (1995). Wilcox’s other best-known series stars Alan Bernhardt, a theatrical director with a habit of getting involved in behind-the-scenes mysteries. Bernhardt appeared in four more books after his introduction in 1988’s Bernhardt’s Edge.
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