Author(s): Crais, Robert

Fiction

Carol Starkey is struggling to pick up the pieces of her former life as L.A.'s finest bomb squad technician.  Fueled with liberal doses of alcohol and Tagamet, she's doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section.  Three years have passed since the event that haunts her--a detonation that killed her partner and lover, David "Sugar" Boudreaux.  Fragments from the same explosion sliced through Starkey's protective Kevlar, scarred her beyond repair, and left her outside looking in at the life she left behind.  Now she can't bear her reflection in the mirror, and hasn't been with another man since Sugar left her bed the morning they rolled out to the bomb site.

When a seemingly innocuous bomb call turns into a devastating murder scene, Carol catches the case and embarks on an investigation of a series of explosions that reveal intentions far more disturbing than one-shot acts of anarchy.  The bombs are designed expressly to kill bomb technicians, and as the one tech who survived the deadliest of blasts, Carol is in for the most intense fight of her life.