First Commandment: A Hunter Quinn Mystery

Hunter Quinn is a cigarillo-smoking, whisky-sipping private investigator who works from a luxurious suite above fashionable Santana Row. Previously, she was the only female homicide detective with San Jose police where fellow officers regularly applauded her uncanny instincts into human nature. She thrived on the excitement and mental challenges, but resigned after seven years of clashing with California’s growing portfolio of über-liberal laws. She needed freedom from the bureaucracy and political correctness. A bigger paycheck for payments on her new Jaguar would also help.

Aaron Horowitz, whose granddaughter was killed in a shooting at First Commandment Elementary School, approaches Hunter to find and kill the shooter who mysteriously vanished nine months before. She rebuffs the assassination request, but agrees to talk with the detective in charge, Richard Braklin, her former partner and lover who she still has feelings for despite his recent marriage. He describes a note left in his son’s mailbox that suggests more than a lone deranged shooter was involved. Hunter is challenged and the client is rich, so she takes the case.

Hints of anti-Semitism, a neighbor’s child killed in the Six-Day War, the father who hires illegals for his construction business, and a senator with a gun-confiscation platform could be clues, but they lead nowhere. For the first time, she’s confused. When she’s suddenly attracted to the new FBI investigator from Sacramento, she’s further distracted.

After a second school shooting, Hunter’s instincts suggest a possible connection between recent anti-gun protests and the shootings. With no alternate plan, she goes undercover to ingratiate herself with the protest leader, an ex-con she’s convinced is “a bad player” and “a creep.” How will she do that?

Within days, the puzzle takes a strange twist and the case morphs from challenging to deadly. Who can she turn to for help?