Despite her education and training, Charlotte Justice has concluded that being a black female in the Los Angeles Police Department is no day at the beach. Instead, the elite homicide detective's days are filled with incompetence, bigotry, and the mayhem of the streets. First, Charlotte confronts the work of a self-styled "angel of mercy" that her colleagues helped convict . and who may have an active accomplice still at large. And now she faces the baffling case of Maynard Duncan, a pioneering African American film director and community activist who was all but forgotten-until he was found dead in his elegant Hancock Park home. Was it an accident, murder, or suicide-by his own hand or with assistance? As Charlotte unravels Duncan's tangled web of relationships-family, friends, business associates, and secret liaisons-she finds herself on a journey from Hollywood myth to L.A. reality.

It's a journey where Charlotte must risk everything-her career, her relationships, even her life-to hunt down a murderer hell-bent on exacting the ultimate revenge. From the Trade Paperback edition.