Book description
While the rest of San Diego deals with the horrors and shortages of
World War II, private investigator Tom Hickey is making his fortune
moonlighting as half owner of Rudy's Hacienda, a downtown nightclub.
That is, until the club's young jazz singer Cynthia Moon disappears and
business drops precipitously. When Tom goes looking for Cynthia, he
discovers her bizarre, tragic and dangerous family and a spiritualist
cult led by her mother Venus. Can Hickey navigate the half-mad
atmosphere of Venus' cult and find Cynthia? Can he save the girl from
herself and the demons that haunt her, and still hold onto his business,
his wife, and his daughter? Ken Kuhlkens stories have appeared in
Esquire and numerous other magazines and anthologies, been honorably
mentioned in Best American Short Stories and earned a National Endowment
for the Arts Fellowship. His novels are Midheaven (finalist for the
Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, 1980), and the
Hickey family mysteries The Loud Adios (St. Martins/PWA Press Best First
PI Novel, 1989), The Venus Deal, The Angel Gang, The Do-Re-Mi (Shamus
Award finalist), and The Vagabond Virgins (February 2008). The author
lives in La Mesa, CA
