Title: Nightwork (#7 in the Dave Brandstetter series) Author: Joseph Hansen Published by: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984 ISBN: 0-03-060486-9 [hardcover, 172 pages]
In a remote spot outside L.A., a giant truck suddenly plunges in flames off a midnight mountain road. It looks like an accident. It isn't. Someone fastened a bomb under that truck. The owner-driver; Paul Myers, was insured for a hundred thousand dollars. The insurers call in crack death-claims investigator Dave Brandstetter to find out what happened and why.Sheriff's deputies blame the death on Silencio Ruiz, a street-gang leader sent to prison two years ago on Myer's testimony and just released on parole. But Dave Brandstetter wonders about Myers' widow. Lonely, neglected, bearing the bruises of a beating, she'd been having an affair with the schoolteacher. Did the two of them conspire to murder -- for love and money?
And what was Myers hauling in that secluded place in the small hours of the night? For whom? No one wants to answer Dave's questions. Fear is in their silence. Records are sketchy. Then another trucker's death arouses suspicion, and a chilling pattern begins to emerge.
The shacky slum-in-the-sun in which Nightwork opens is a killing ground where everything from car-stripping to the slaughter of innocents is routine. But just as sinister are the sleek corridors of multi-million-dollar industry, where a facade of smooth public-relations talk hides death-dealing far more ruthless and widespread.
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