At the Blue Dahlia, the forties-style music club where hard-boiled homicide lieutenant Carmen Molina moonlights secretly as a torch singer, things are not as easygoing as they seem. When her gig ends, she can't miss the dead body lying next to her car on the moonlit asphalt of the parking lot, with the words "she left" spray-painted nearby. Soon, another anonymous woman found in a parking lot across town joins the unidentified woman in death.
Is a serial killer at work in Molina's backyard? And will the tough lieutenant have to bite her tongue and resort to the despised help of amateur sleuth Temple Barr to crack the case? Maybe the wily police lieutenant has more devious plans in mind. Certainly neither of Temple's two love interests, hotline counselor Matt Devine and the magician-cum-undercover man Max Kinsella, is far from committing crimes of the heart--or of homicide--as the double murder case unfolds.
Meanwhile, Louie reluctantly finds himself walking on the wild side in partnership with his feisty if disapproving daughter, Midnight Louise, when a glamorous feline client seeks his help in finding her missing boyfriend. Can both Midnight and Temple reconcile themselves to working with others soon enough to solve their respective cases--and keep themselves from ending up the same way?
