STORM RUNNERS
Matt Stromsoe has come a long way since his wife and son were killed in
an explosion meant for him. Wounded severely in both body and spirit,
Stromsoe gave up the last thing that held any meaning for him - his job
on the police force - and proceeded to hit rock bottom, hard.
That was a lifetime ago, and finally the spiral of personal destruction
and despair seems to have come to an end. The man responsible for the
murders - Stromsoe's best friend from childhood and his wife's old
lover - is behind bars and Stromsoe has put the past behind him, rescued
from the abyss by a former colleague who offers him a job at his private
security firm. Stromsoe's first assignment is to protect local
television personality Frankie Hatfield from a stalker. But the further
Stromsoe is drawn into this case, the more he finds that the net of
intrigue is wide and ultimately leads back to the man who killed his
family. As events conspire against him, Stromsoe learns that prison is
no safeguard against revenge.
THE FALLEN
My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a
downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide
detective for the city of San Diego. I am twenty-nine years old.
I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get
mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as
colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the
words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector. After
three years, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the colors and
shapes of other people's feelings, unless they don't match up with their
words.
When Garrett Asplundh's body is found under a San Diego bridge, Robbie
Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are called on to the case.
After the tragic death of his child and the dissolution of his marriage,
Garrett - regarded as an honest, straight-arrow officer - left the SDPD
to become an ethics investigator, looking into the activities of his
former colleagues. At first his death, which takes place on the eve of a
reconciliation with his ex, looks like suicide, but the clues Brownlaw
and Cortez find just don't add up. With pressure mounting from the
police and the city's politicians, Brownlaw fights to find the truth,
all the while trying to hold on to his own crumbling marriage. Was
Garrett's death an "execution" or a crime of passion, a personal
vendetta or the final step in an elaborate cover-up?
