this is my good friend and co-writer Marshall Karp at his funniest-while also fashioning a very tight and surprising mystery."
-James Patterson, author of the Alex Cross novels

How much would it cost to get you to kill?

Marshall Karp, coauthor of the #1 bestselling NYPD Red series, sets this fast-moving Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs mystery in the heart of Los Angeles, where someone is recruiting terminally ill cancer patients to commit one final act before they die... MURDER.

Hollywood homicide Detective Mike Lomax is at a routine medical appointment when an assailant with a shotgun kills a respected Los Angeles fertility doctor and then himself. But the murder makes no sense. The killer and the victim don't know one another.

When a traffic accident turns out to be a second murder, and again the killer and victim are strangers, Lomax and his partner Terry Biggs have to connect the dots to uncover the shocking motive behind the killings.Laced with twists, turns, and Karp's trademark biting cop humor, readers may start rooting for the killers: cancer patients willing to kill to earn a half million dollars for the loved ones they will leave behind.

The trail of bloodshed leads to a ringleader with a taste for Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Ayn Rand, and Nancy Drew; victims being dropped to their deaths from a helicopter; and the powerful and malevolent forces of Big Pharma. As the body count mounts Lomax and Biggs realize that they are uncovering a plot that leads to the corporate boardroom and maybe to a cabinet secretary.

Detective Lomax, at the same time, faces a personal health scare, life-changing decisions regarding his girlfriend Diana and their foster daughter Sophie, and, as always, his well-meaning but meddling father Big Jim.

Let Marshall Karp take you on a bloody tour of Los Angeles as detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs untangle a web of murder, conspiracy, and mystery. Once your adrenaline is pumping and your appetite whetted don't hesitate to move onto the rest of the fast-paced Lomax and Biggs mystery series: The Rabbit Factory; Bloodthirsty; Flipping Out; and Cut, Paste, Kill.