Order from Amazon:
ISBN 0-451-20702-5

The fourth in the Liam Campbell series, with my favorite Liam cover. The story came from the recent discovery of the wreckage of a World War II troop plane on Mt. Sanford. There had been a lot of rumors about it, too, and it is the novelist’s delightful privelege to turn those rumors into fact. Between the covers of a novel, anyway.

Audio Excerpt

Hear an audio excerpt from this book at Odeo.com.

Book Excerpt

“I’m a vampire.”

“Of course you are,” Diana Prince said.

“I suck blood.”

“Of course you do.”

The young woman sitting on the other side of Diana Prince’s desk was thin to the point of emaciation, with sharp cheekbones emphasized by fine, black, almost certainly dyed hair sleeked into a severe knot at the back of her head. Her eyebrows, eyelids and lips were painted black, and she wore a high-necked, long-sleeved, ankle-length dress of some dense fabric that seemed to suck up all the available light, which considering that the ceiling of the post was wall-to-wall fluorescent tubing was quite a trick. Maybe she really was a vampire.

Then again, Diana was well into overtime, after a day of duty that had had its moments, highlighted by the disarming of an enraged father bent on avenging the defloration of his 17-year old daughter by her fisherman boyfriend, who was a little less than six months older than she was. It was the last day of what had proven to be a labor-intensive week. Maybe it was just that she was tired, and about to fall face forward into the now cold bean burrito sitting on her desk.

“Officer Prince,” the vampire said, leaning forward in her chair, every line of her gaunt body taut with earnest sincerity, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else. So if you will–” She proffered the items in her lap in mute appeal.

Diana eyed what looked like a leathercrafter’s rubber mallet and a wooden stake that appeared to have been carved from the limb of a very dead spruce, and gave an inward sigh.