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Page history last edited by Randal Brandt 9 months ago

Kains, Josephine. [Ron Goulart]

The Green Lama Mystery. Kensington Pub. Corp., 1979.

The Laughing Dragon Mystery. Kensington Pub. Corp., 1980.

Kaiser, R. J.

Squeeze Play. MIRA Books, 2002.

Kaminsky, Stuart M.

Poor Butterfly. Mysterious Press, 1990.

Summary: 1942: Los Angeles private eye Toby Peters is called to San Francisco to do a job for the Metropolitan Opera. Leopold Stokowski is preparing to open Madame Butterfly amidst protesters who object to an opera that sympathetically portrays the plight of a Japanese woman abandoned by an American naval officer. After receiving a threatening note and the suspicious accidental death of a plasterer, Stokowski is convinced someone is set on sabotaging the performance. Peters investigates, falls for a soprano, gets framed for murder, and has to solve a couple more deaths before the show can go on …

Kandel, Susan.

Shamus in the Green Room. William Morrow, 2006.

| setting: Los Angeles; San Francisco | series character: Cece Caruso (3) | find it |

Summary: Los Angeles writer Cece Caruso is thrilled that her biography of the legendary Dashiell Hammett is headed for the big screen. Rafe Simic, the actor cast as the lead, may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the money she'll make tutoring him in the ABCs of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man should be good enough to feed Cece's addiction to vintage Yves St. Laurent. But when the dead body of one of Rafe's old flames is discovered'and neither the "facts" nor the hunky star's alibi add up. Cece can't help but ask questions. However, the twists in this case would confound Sam Spade himself. And in her zeal to win justice for the deceased, Cece might end up pulling the plug on the movie'if someone doesn't pull the plug on Cece first.

Kane, Ellery.

Legacy. Balboa Press, 2014.

Summary: How do you want to feel today? In 2041, the choice is yours. San Francisco is deserted, the Bay Bridge bombed, and the BART subway trains grounded. The Guardians, members of an elite and mysterious government-appointed military police force, are maintaining order at all costs -- thanks to emotion-altering drugs like Emovere that suppress fear and anxiety. Lex Knightley, daughter of a prominent forensic psychiatrist, risks entering the devastated city to partner with the Resistance, a group of rebels intent upon exposing the dangers of Emovere. Lex discovers an ally in Quin McAllister, a magnetic Guardian Force recruit with a haunting past that binds them together. As she uncovers the secrets of the Guardian Force and confronts the truth about her family, Lex begins to realize that even those closest to her are not quite who they seem.

Prophecy. Dog Ear Publishing, 2015.

Summary: Over a year has passed since Lex Knightley journeyed alone into desolate San Francisco. The Guardian Force is disbanded, emotion-altering drugs banned, and citizens allowed to return to the seemingly resurrected city. For Lex, life is almost normal, but normal is precarious. Normal has a way of falling apart. One rainy night changes everything. Out on parole, Quin McAllister's father is arrested for the brutal murder of his new wife. As the Resistance resurges, claiming a conspiracy, Lex doesn't know what-or who-to believe. When old enemies resurface in new disguises and trusted friends start keeping secrets, normal splits right down the middle, leaving Lex and Quin on opposite sides. Prophecy -- the second novel of Ellery Kane's Legacy trilogy -- continues the story of Lex and Quin, testing the strength of friendship, forgiveness, and love.

Revelation. Dog Ear Publishing, 2015.

Summary: Lex Knightley is keeping count. It's been seventy-five days since Quin left for Los Angeles. Seventy-five days without one word from him. Sixty-one since she made a deal with a devil. A deal she already regrets. And exactly thirty-nine days since Onyx -- the deadliest emotion-altering medication yet -- hit the streets, leaving an escalating body count in its wake. With Zenigenic promising a new drug -- an anti-Onyx to make the world a little kinder and a lot more compliant -- it seems Xander Steele will stop at nothing to satisfy his desire for power and control. Quin's dramatic return brings more questions than answers. Lex suddenly finds herself right in the middle of it all... on a run for her life. It's a race against the clock to uncover Steele's diabolical plan as the fate of San Francisco hangs in the balance. Can Lex finally fulfill her mother's ambition to expose Zenigenic -- or is it already too late?

Daddy Darkest. Ellery Kane Publishing, 2016.

Summary: A month after her high school graduation, small-town-girl Samantha "Sam" Bronwyn boards a plane with her best friend, Ginny. Destination: San Francisco. But when Ginny disappears inside an airport bathroom wearing Sam's letterman jacket, it doesn't take her long to figure out she was the intended target. Alone in a strange city, Sam's on a run for her life -- drawn into a dark past she never knew existed. A past where secrets aren't all that's buried and where revenge comes at the highest price. Who is Sam really -- and who can she trust? The mysterious stranger in 4A who secreted a gun in his backpack? The guilty ex-con? The disarming FBI agent? Her own mother? Only one thing is certain. Someone is after her. Someone who knows more about her than she does. Someone who wants to teach her a hard lesson: There are worse things than murder.

Kane, Frank.

The Lineup. Dell Publishing Co., 1959.

The Guilt Edged Frame. Dell Publishing Co., 1964.

Kang, Jay Caspian.

The Dead Do Not Improve. Crown Publishing Group, 2012.

| setting: San Francisco | find it |

Kaplan, E.M.

Dim Sum, Dead Some. Crow Books, 2015.

Kauffman, Willis C.

The Curse of the Emperor C'huz. Savant Press, 2007.

| setting: East Bay; Hayward | pbo | find it |

Keating, Henry. [H.R.F. Keating]

Murder by Death. Warner Books, 1976.

Summary: Novelization of the motion picture screenplay written by Neil Simon and filmed by Robert Moore, starring Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, and Estelle Winwood. In this murder mystery spoof, the enigmatic, eccentric, and fabulously wealthy Lionel Twain, frustrated by the predictability and implausibility of the mystery novels he devours, invites the world’s five greatest living detectives to his San Francisco mansion for dinner -- and a murder. The detectives are thinly disguised pastiches of some of literature’s most famous sleuths: Sidney Wang (Charlie Chan), Milo Perrier (Hercule Poirot), Dick and Dora Charleston (Nick and Nora Charles), Miss Marbles (Miss Marple), and San Francisco’s hard-boiled P.I. Sam Diamond (Sam Spade). Since all of the action takes place inside Twain’s spooky mansion, there is really no need to set the story specifically in San Francisco, except, perhaps for the fog: “Fog everywhere. Fog down in San Francisco Bay where it flowed past Goat Island and Angel Island and Alcatraz. Fog in the streets where it rolled defiled among the blocks of high-rises and the curbside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog in Chinatown, fog on Nob Hill. Fog creeping into the cabins of the cable cars, fog lying up on the roofs and hovering in the TV aerials of tall buildings; fog drooping on the signboards of restaurants and nightclubs. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient waterfront hookers, wheezing by the screens of their TV sets; fog in the stem and bowl of the evening pipe of the dreamy addict, down in his close cellar; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little girl friend on her way to the liquor store. Chance people on the Golden Gate Bridge peered from their cars into a sky of fog underneath them, with fog all around them, as if they were in a helicopter and hovering in the mist clouds. The raw evening was at its rawest, though, and the dense fog was at its densest near those high old Victorian piles that dot either side of Lola Lane out in the remote countryside. [?] And No. 22 Lola Lane was at the very heart of the fog.”

Keats, Jonathon.

The Pathology of Lies. Warner Books, 1999.

Keeble, John.

Yellowfish. Harper & Row, 1980.

| setting: San Francisco | Herron | find it |

Summary: Wesley Erks is a smuggler. He transports young men—Triad initiates originally from Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—down the west coast from British Columbia to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where they are inducted into the Chinese Six Companies. Erks is ready to retire and settle down with his wife on their farm in Washington State when he is convinced to make one more run. His cargo is Ginarn Taam, the son of the recently deceased senior director of the Six Companies. Taam has been in exile in Red China for seven years and is wanted in the U.S. both by the government and the Triad, which has an execution order out for him. A story of illegal immigration, betrayal, desperation, and murder.

Keene, Carolyn.

The Silent Suspect. Pocket Books, 1990.

Summary: In San Francisco, Nancy Drew helps an architect investigate the suspicious fires at his construction sites and tries to explain the evidence implicating his own daughter.

Target for Terror. Pocket Books, 1995.

Trade Wind Danger. Aladdin Paperbacks, 2005.

Summary: Nancy Drew and her friends investigate when they are followed by a mysterious couple in San Francisco. Later, their investigation leads them to Hawaii.

Kegan, Stephanie.

Golden State. Simon & Schuster, 2015.

| setting: San Francisco Bay Area; Stanford | find it |

Summary: All her life, Natalie Askedahl has been the good girl, an obedient team player. Growing up as the youngest child in one of California's most prominent political families, she worshiped her big brother, Bobby, a sensitive math prodigy who served as her protector and confidante. But after Bobby left home at sixteen on a Harvard scholarship, something changed between them as Bobby retreated deeper into his own head. Now that Natalie is a happily married, with a lawyer husband, two young daughters, and a house in the Berkeley Hills, her only real regret is losing Bobby. Then, a bomb explodes in the middle of her ideal-seeming life. Her oldest daughter is on the Stanford campus when one person is killed and another maimed. Worse, other attacks follow across California. Frightened for her family, Natalie grows obsessed with the case of the so-called Cal Bomber, until she makes an unthinkable discovery: the bomber's infamous manifesto reads alarmingly like the last letter she has from Bobby, whom she has seen only once in fifteen years. Unable to face the possibility that her sweet brother could be a monster and a murderer, is confronted with a terrible choice, about who to sacrifice and who to protect. The decision she makes will send her down a rabbit hole of confusion, lies, and betrayals that threaten to destroy her relationships with everyone she holds dear. As her life splits irrevocably into before and after, what she begins to learn is that some of the most dangerous things in the world are the stories we tell ourselves

Kelland, Clarence Budington.

Dangerous Angel. Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1953.

| setting: San Francisco | Baird & Greenwood 1353; Hubin | find it |

Summary: First there was the gold rush; then came the silver mines of the Comstock Lode. In 1872, San Francisco was poised to set off the third major boom of California’s young history -- diamonds. Set against the backdrop of the Great Diamond Hoax, this novel tells the story of Anneke Villard, a beautiful and ambitious young woman newly arrived in San Francisco from Kentucky. With a modest bankroll, and determined to establish herself in society, Anneke quickly aligns herself with William C. Ralston, head of the Bank of California, and his wife. Under the sponsorship of the Ralstons, Anneke is granted entrée into the city’s young elite. She is also well-placed to pick up bits and pieces of business information that, with the help of her trusted duenna Hepsibah, she skillfully turns to her advantage. Anneke’s plans -- and, indeed, her life -- are threatened when Philip Arnold, whom she had known as a child in Kentucky, and his partner John Slack, who are in San Francisco trying to establish financial backing for their scheme to establish a diamond syndicate. When they present a bag of diamonds and other jewels to the city’s leading citizens that they claimed to have found in a secret location, the investors are eager to get in on the ground floor. Anneke soon becomes suspicious and when she shares her doubts with Arnold, he and Slack plan to take steps to keep her from sharing them with anyone else -- permanent steps. An interesting portrait of San Francisco in the wide-open 1870s, liberally sprinkled with actual persons, institutions, and events.

Keller, David H.

Wolf Hollow Bubbles: A Taine of San Francisco Story. ARRA Printers, 1934.

Kellerman, Jonathan, and Faye Kellerman.

Capital Crimes. Ballantine Books, 2006.

| settings: Berkeley; Nashville | series characters: Peter Decker; Alex Delaware | find it |

Summary: Two novellas. In My Sister's Keeper, set in Berkeley, progressive state representative Davida Grayson fits in well with her constituents. But some of Davida’s views have made her unpopular elsewhere. Davida’s foes are numerous: politicians on the other side of the aisle, racist hatemongers, even dissenters in her own party. Still, no one suspects that any buttons Davida might push could evoke deadly force. But now Davida lies brutally murdered in her office, and Berkeley homicide detectives Will Barnes and Amanda Isis must unravel Davida’s complex, surprising life in order to find her killer. As they dig deeper, Will and Amanda realize that the real Davida Grayson was someone the public never knew. The investigation draws the detectives into a labyrinth of hidden sexuality, dark secrets, betrayal, and bloody vengeance that leads tortuously into madness. With time short and the suspect list long, Barnes and Isis must find the answers before the killer pulls off a repeat performance.

Kellerman, Jonathan, and Jesse Kellerman.

Crime Scene. Ballantine Books, 2017.

| settings: Berkeley | series character: Clay Edison (1) | find it |

Summary: A corpse lying at the bottom of the stairs. A beautiful but troubled young woman. A brutal, decades-old murder. And the man charged with making sense of it all. Clay Edison is a former star athlete turned coroner's investigator for Alameda County. It's his job to care for the dead and the people they leave behind. It's not his job to solve mysteries. But some cases -- and some people -- can't be resisted. What he discovers will set him on a quest to overturn a hideous injustice, no matter the consequences.

A Measure of Darkness. Ballantine Books, 2018.

| settings: Berkeley; Oakland | series character: Clay Edison (2) | find it |

Summary: It's been a busy year for Alameda County Coroner's Deputy Clay Edison. He's solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man -- earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. And his brother's fresh out of prison, bringing with him a great big basket of crazy. Then the call comes in the middle of the night. It's a bad one. A party in West Oakland. An argument with the neighbors. A crowd in the street. Two guns, firing at random, spreading chaos and death. Nobody knows the body count yet. What Clay does know is this: it's going to be a long, long night. Longer than he ever could have imagined. Because when the dust settles, there's an extra victim. One who can't be accounted for. A young woman, strangled instead of shot, without ID and a stranger to all. She is Jane Doe. She is the Unknown. Clay's journey to give her a name and bring her justice will lead him into the bizarre -- a seductive world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle; where right and wrong begin to blur.

Half Moon Bay. Ballantine Books, 2020.

| settings: Berkeley (People's Park) | series character: Clay Edison (3) | find it |

Summary: Alameda County Coroner's Deputy Clay Edison has his hands full. He's got a new baby who won't sleep. He's working the graveyard shift. And he's trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call -- this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing fifty years ago, the man says. Or at least I think she did. It's a little complicated. And things only get stranger from there. Clay's relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn't dead. It's very much alive. And it can be murderous.

The Burning. Ballantine Books, 2021.

| settings: Alameda County | series character: Clay Edison (4) | find it |

Summary: A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home. For Clay Edison, it's all in a day's work. As Alameda County Deputy Coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble. Then, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke. Horrified. But not surprised. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. And now he's gone AWOL. The race is on for Clay to find him before anyone else can. Confronted with Luke's legacy of violence, Clay is forced to reckon with his own suspicions, resentments, and loyalties. Is his brother a killer? Or could he be the victim in all of this, too?

Kelly, C. L.

Delicacy. Zondervan, 2008.

Kelly, David A.

The San Francisco Splash. Random House, 2013.

Summary: Splash! A hit soars over the walls of the San Francisco ballpark on the bay and drops into the water. But then Mike and Kate hear another, much larger splash nearby... and this time it’s not a baseball. It’s a man overboard! And when he’s pulled from the water, the old-time ballplayer discovers his World Series ring is gone! Is it at the bottom of the bay? Or was it somehow stolen by a long-ago rival?” The seventh volume in a series of early chapter book mysteries, where each book is set in a different American ballpark; includes several pages of ‘Dugout Notes,’ fun facts about San Francisco’s AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.

Kennealy, G. P. [Jerry Kennealy]

Nobody Wins. Manor Books, 1978.

Kennealy, Jerry. [see also Boray, Paul; Kennealy, G. P.]

Polo Solo. St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

Polo, Anyone? St. Martin’s Press, 1988.

Summary: San Francisco PI Nick Polo gets in over his head when he sets up a sting operation to nab a man suspected of cheating his friends in a high-stakes poker game.

Polo’s Ponies. St. Martin’s Press, 1988.

Polo in the Rough. St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Polo’s Wild Card. St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

Green With Envy. St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

Special Delivery. St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

| setting: San Francisco, London (England) | series character: Nick Polo | find it |

Vintage Polo. St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

| setting: San Francisco | series character: Nick Polo | find it |

Beggar’s Choice. St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Summary: A homeless man is run over by a car in San Francisco and the police write it off as an accident. Private investigator Nick Polo, a friend of the man, launches a probe of his own which brings him face to face with the Chinese mafia and a smuggling operation.

The Conductor. Headline Feature, 1995; Signet, 1996.

| setting: San Francisco | Hubin | find it |

The Forger. Headline Book Publishing, 1996.

Summary: A tale of art fraud featuring San Francisco insurance investigator Robert Duran. While Duran is investigating a stolen van Gogh painting, his wife is abducted by her first husband, an ex-convict. Is there a connection?

All That Glitters. St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Summary: San Francisco private eye Nick Polo is hired to investigate a Russian woman offering for sale a gold medal that belonged to the son of Genghis Khan. The mystery deepens when Polo learns the woman is being tailed by military intelligence.

The Hunted. Signet, 1999.

Summary: An orphaned Russian girl is lured to America by a cousin and sold into prostitution in a brothel in San Francisco. She witnesses the madam’s murder, and flees taking a computer with data on arms smuggling, thus becoming the target of assassins.

The Other Eye. Onyx, 2000.

Summary: Mark Martel is a very successful jewel thief. He is engaged to a beautiful woman, lives in a nice upscale home, and seems to have everything he wants in life. However, his perfect world crashes after delivering a $200,000 painting to a buyer, don Ganero. His client’s son tries to kill Mark and his girlfriend. The assailant carries out his assault, believing that Mark is dead in the Hudson River. Mark survives, but loses an eye. He turns state’s evidence and enters the witness protection program as Mark Marre, San Francisco vintner extraordinaire. Ganero believes that Mark killed his son and puts a $500,000 contract on him. Meanwhile, a several jewel thefts occur that have Mark’s signature modus operandi all over them. Insurance worker Lisa Cole tracks down Mark, believing he committed the crimes. He offers her proof he is innocent, but now Ganero and his henchmen are closing in on Mark, ready to even the score.

Jigsaw. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2007.

| setting: San Francisco | series character: Carroll Quint | find it |

Summary: Carroll Quint is the entertainment critic for the San Francisco Bulletin, a job that comes with fringe benefits like movie screenings, play premieres, opera openings, and close personal contact with the city’s glitterati. Quint is thrust into the role of unwilling detective when a serial killer calling himself Thanatos -- the Greek god of death -- starts sending him cryptic e-mail messages, taunting him with clues about his next target taken from Alfred Hitchcock movies. All of the targets also happen to be acquaintances of Quint’s, a fact that quickly makes him the police’s prime suspect. With the grudging help of San Francisco homicide inspector Dave Granger, along with his girlfriend, Terry Greco (she is the paper’s book and restaurant reviewer, “the proverbial ten pounds of candy in an eight-pound bag … short and tightly packed”), and even his mother (a former actress who was an extra in Live and Let Die -- “how many guys can say his mom was a Bond Girl?”), Quint has to decipher the clues and catch the killer, before he becomes a victim himself.

Still Shot. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2008.

| setting: San Francisco | series character: Carroll Quint | find it |

Screen Test. Down & Out Books, 2016.

| setting: San Francisco (1968) | series character: Johnny O'Rorke | find it |

Summary: In April of 1968 Steve McQueen arrives in San Francisco to film Bullitt. Rough-and-tumble SFPD Inspector Johnny O'Rorke, aka The Fixer, is the department's Executive Protection Officer. His job is to make sure that visiting celebrities are well taken care of. O'Rorke is instructed to take special care of McQueen; the city's movers and shakers are hoping to develop San Francisco into Hollywood North. McQueen takes a liking to O'Rorke, and when Russ Cortig, a member of his film crew, is busted at a wild Haight Ashbury party, he asks O'Rorke to try to have the charge dismissed. Fixing Cortig's arrest sheet is a minor problem, but it leads O'Rorke into a tangled web of intrigue and corruption that includes the murder of one of his longtime informers, a cross-dresser who goes by the name of Vanessa the Undresser, tangling with a Chinatown drug lord, being shot at by a sadistic Soviet hit man, going up against a wealthy former Russian Mafia leader now living in San Francisco, dealing with a vicious local gangster, Alec Zek, aka The Swine, and a chasing after a priceless blue diamond known as the Stalin Blue. If that isn’t complicated enough, O'Rorke breaks into a real sweat when McQueen asks him to make a screen test for a part in Bullitt.

Polo's Long Shot. Down & Out Books, 2017.

| setting: San Francisco | series character: Nick Polo | tpo |

Summary: Billionaire vintner Paul Bernier sets San Francisco ex-cop, ex-con, private eye Nick Polo off on a hunt to find a kukri, a priceless golden jewel-encrusted 14th century dagger, designed by the Emperor of India. The dagger has a long, bloody history, passing between war lords throughout the ages, including Saddam Hussain. The search has Polo bumping heads with Bernier's vindictive stepdaughter, his eccentric household staff, a Miami con man, a crooked private investigator, a drug dealing nightclub owner, a New York Mafia Don, and two viscous murderers. When all seems lost, Polo gets help from Mrs. Damonte, a self-described Strega, a witch, who believes that a day without a wake is like a day without sunshine.

Dirty Who? Down & Out Books, 2018.

| setting: San Francisco (1970) | series character: Johnny O'Rorke | tpo |

Summary: Rough and tumble SFPD Inspector Johnny O'Rorke, the department's Executive Protection Officer, has a new partner, Cosmo the Wonder Dog, a Lakeland terrier his sister has left in his care. O'Rorke is called to San Francisco City Hall to meet with Film Commissioner Audrey Pebble. Warner Brothers is preparing to film a major motion picture, Dirty Harry, in San Francisco, with Frank Sinatra set for the starring role as Inspector Harry Callahan. Pebble knows that O'Rorke has worked as a bodyguard for Sinatra. She hired Harly Walker, a local young artist and musician, to scout the city for locations that would appeal to Warner Brothers. Walker has disappeared and Pebble is desperate for O'Rorke to find him. The hunt takes O'Rorke and Cosmo to the famed Haight Ashbury Medical Clinic and to some of the darkest, most dangerous areas of the city, including porno movie studios, drug dens, bathhouses and hardcore leather bars. While searching for Walker, O'Rorke learns that several of Harly's friends have been murdered in such a painful manner that even the medical examiner is shocked. O'Rorke races to find the killer -- and then comes the hard part: Telling Frank Sinatra that he is not right for the role of Dirty Harry.

Silent Remains. Down & Out Books, 2019.

Summary: When SFPD Homicide Inspector Nick Jarnac investigates the murder of a 19-year-old girl missing for 40 years, her skeleton found in the mud of a construction site near the remains of two dozen Miwok Indians who have been in the ground for two centuries, he becomes involved in a bizarre, complex plot that involves a Macau-based Mafia chief, several crooked state and local politicians, a cross-dressing Mongolian hit man, a 77-year-old private eye and his burned out ex-SFPD partner, who is hoping to make one last big haul before leaving the department.

Kenrick, Tony.

A Tough One to Lose. Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.

Kent, Stan.

Shoe Leather. Blue Moon Books, 1999.

Shoes Your Weapon. Blue Moon Books, 2000.

Kerner, Ben. [see Van Dycke, Tom]

Kerns, David.

Standard of Care. Sentient Publications, 2007.

Summary: Soon after Dr. Daniel Fazen becomes an executive at his cherished community hospital [in Berkeley, California], it is acquired by a predatory health care conglomerate. It quickly becomes clear that those in power at this ruthless corporation have little concern for the human beings under their care. The stand Dan takes to save his patients creates an extraordinary showdown between one man with a conscience and the forces of big business greed. This dramatic insider’s look at the dark side of our health care system is a gripping and cautionary tale for America, where being in the wrong hospital at the wrong time can cost you your health -- or your life.

Kilgore, James William.

Prudence Couldn’t Swim. PM Press, 2012.

| setting: Oakland | tpo | find it |

Killough, Lee.

Blood Hunt. Tor Horror, 1987.

Bloodlinks. Tor Horror, 1988.

Killer Karma. Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc., 2005.

Kilworth, Garry D.

Angel. Victor Gollancz, 1993; Forge, 1996.

Summary: In Paradise, the war between good and evil continues, outside of time and space. When a demon seeks refuge in time on Earth, an angel is sent to kill him. When humans start dying in the crossfire, two San Francisco detectives go after the angel.

Kimbrough, Katheryn. [John M. Kimbro]

Peggy, the Concerned. Fawcett Popular Library, 1980.

Olga, the Disillusioned. Fawcett Popular Library, 1980.

Summary: Olga Duvane was blessed with delicate beauty, but cursed by recurring heartbreak. On a night of sinister fog she barely survived a ferryboat tragedy, only to lose her beloved fiancé to the merciless currents. By a stroke of fate, roguishly handsome Jeremy Pendergast, friend and associate of the mighty Hayden Phenwick, was her rescuer. But Jeremy was overcome by a strange spell of debauchery and dissipation, and eccentric, headstrong Hayden Phenwick beckoned to him darkly from the shadows. The shattering upheaval of the San Francisco earthquake sealed Olga’s fate forever -- as a Phenwick woman. Yet one more ordeal was to follow, a test of love and courage more final and more terrifying than all that had gone before....

King, Laurie R.

A Grave Talent. St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Summary: Kate Martinelli, recently promoted to the Homicide division of the San Francisco Police Department, is partnered up with Alonzo (Al) Hawkin, who isn’t quite sure of his new female partner. The first case they catch together involves the kidnapping and murder of three young girls from San Francisco that at first appear to be unrelated incidents. But when their nude bodies are discovered in the same secluded rural community in the hills of Santa Clara County, south of the city, it becomes clear that they are the work of a single killer. As Kate and Al investigate the residents the “The Road” (as the community calls itself), suspicion quickly falls on Vaun Adams, an artist who had been convicted of strangling a six-year old girl seventeen years earlier. Since serving her prison sentence, she has been living quietly in the mountains -- and taking the art world by storm as the talented and reclusive “Eva Vaughn.” Even though they both have a hard time believing that the gentle, sensitive painter is a serial killer, Kate and Al become convinced that the secret to the mystery lies in her past. As they get closer to the killer, they get closer to each other -- too close for Kate’s liking -- and the final encounter will leave them changed forever. Editor’s note: This book won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1994.

To Play the Fool. St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Summary: In San Francisco, lesbian police officer Kate Martinelli investigates the death of a homeless man. The prime suspect is Brother Erasmus, another homeless man, but getting him to talk is difficult because he only speaks in quotations.

With Child. St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Summary: Kate Martinelli, a quietly lesbian San Francisco homicide detective, can’t escape the void left by her departed lover, Lee, who has gone off to rethink their relationship. Twelve-year-old Jules Cameron -- stepdaughter of her police partner, Al Hawkin -- comes to Kate to help her find her friend Dio, a homeless boy she met in a park. Dio has disappeared without a word of farewell, and Jules wants Kate to find him. Reluctant as she is, Kate can’t say no, but the search for Dio will prove to be much more than both bargained for and it’s only the beginning. When Jules disappears while taking a trip with Kate, a desperate search begins ... and Kate knows all too well the odds of finding the child alive.

Night Work. Bantam Books, 2000.

Locked Rooms. Bantam Books, 2005.

| setting: San Francisco (1924) | series character: Mary Russell (8) | find it |

Summary: In 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, are in San Francisco so that she can sell the Pacific Heights house that she inherited after her family’s death in an automobile crash ten years before. The backstory is that Russell’s father (who hailed from an old Boston family) and mother (who was British) had settled in San Francisco at the turn of the century and lived through the 1906 earthquake (although at the beginning of the novel Mary has repressed all of her memories of that time). Mary and her mother and younger brother then moved back to England for several years, where her father would occasionally visit them. The family returned to San Francisco in 1914 and just before her father was to leave to join the fighting in World War I, they were killed when their Maxwell plunged off of the highway on the Peninsula, leaving Mary as the only survivor. After several months of recovery -- both physically and mentally -- Mary returned to England for good, where she soon made the acquaintance of the world’s greatest detective and became his apprentice. Now Russell and Holmes are in San Francisco to officially cut all of her ties to the city. Shortly after their arrival, Mary is shot at by an unknown assailant, leading her and Holmes to begin investigating what secrets there could be about the long-shuttered house that someone would want to kill her to protect. The investigation leads back to the earthquake and its immediate aftermath. Something happened during that time that drastically changed her father’s relationships with his wife and with the family’s long-devoted gardener, a Chinese-American who lost his own Chinatown home to the fire. As Mary struggles with her childhood memories and ideals, Holmes takes a more pragmatic approach to the investigation, hiring a young, ex-Pinkerton agent/struggling writer named Dashiell Hammett to assist him in local inquiries. Hammett quickly uncovers evidence that the brakes to the Russell auto had been tampered with and that the “accident” was no accident -- it was murder. Although all of the action in this novel takes place years after the earthquake, the solution to the murders eventually leads directly back to the chaotic days of April 1906, when extraordinary events caused ordinary people to commit drastic -- and sometimes illegal and certainly immoral -- actions.

The Art of Detection. Bantam Dell, 2006.

| setting: San Francisco, Marin Headlands | series character: Kate Martinelli | find it |

Summary: SFPD Homicide Inspectors Kate Martinelli and Al Hawkin investigate the death of Philip Gilbert, who body is discovered in Battery DuMaurier, a gun emplacement on the Marin Headlands built to protect the Golden Gate from enemy attack. Kate soon learns that Gilbert, a San Francisco resident, was a Sherlockian (an avid fan and leading scholar of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes) with a priceless collection of memorabilia and the leader of an eccentric circle of fellow Holmes devotees. Kate also discovers that Gilbert had recently acquired a new item for his collection, an unpublished Holmes story set in San Francisco that, if genuine, would blow the lid off of Holmes scholarship. The details in the story are also eerily similar to the circumstances surrounding Gilbert's death. Would someone really commit murder just to keep a piece of fiction hidden from the light of day? Or are there more personal secrets at play? Kate and Al get involved in a game they have never played before as they track a very different type of killer.

Beginnings. Bay Company Books, Inc., 2019.

Summary: Inspector Kate Martinelli has worked the SFPD's Homicide Detail for nearly thirty years. She knows all about how a cop builds a case bit by bit to create a clear story from the scattered pieces of evidence. Until the day her fifteen-year-old daughter, Nora, happens to ask about an aunt she'd never met. Kate's kid sister died in the 1980s, a wild young woman who lost control of a car and hit a tree, end of story... except it isn't. Because once Kate begins to look, seeking to reassure Nora that it was only a senseless accident and not the suicide a small town's gossip made it, she starts to find pieces that don't fit the picture. Holes in the evidence. Mismatched fragments that change the story Kate has told herself all these years-the story that for her, was the beginning of everything. What did happen in Diamond Lake that night? Was it an accident, or a hushed-up suicide? Or was her sister's death something darker yet?

Back to the Garden. Bantam Books, 2022.

| setting: San Francisco | series character: Raquel Laing | find it |

Summary: The Gardener Estate is one of the most storied and beloved places on the West Coast: a magnificent house in vast formal grounds, home to a family that shaped California -- and fought hard to conceal the turmoil and eccentricities within their walls. And now, just as the turmoil seems buried and the estate prepares to move into a new future, construction work unearths a grim relic of the Estate's history: a skull, hidden away some fifty years ago. Inspector Raquel Laing of the SFPD Cold Case Unit has her work cut out for her. Back in the '70s, the Estate was a commune, when its young heir, Rob Gardener, turned the palatial setting into a counterculture Eden of peace, love, and equality. But the '70s were also a time when serial killers preyed on such innocents--monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just assumed a whole new urgency. Could these bones belong to one of his victims? For Raquel Laing -- a woman who knows all about hidden turmoil and eccentricities--the Gardener bones seem clearly linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives for evidence of his presence, what she finds there begins to take on a dark reality of its own. Everything brings her back to Rob Gardener himself -- now a gray-haired recluse, then a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate, fifty years ago. But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer, when the commune fell apart and its residents scattered: a young woman, her child, Rob's brother Fort... The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case -- before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes

King, Peter.

The Jewel of the North: A Jack London Mystery. New American Library, 2001.

Summary: Jack London has worn many hats in his young life -- sailor, law enforcement officer, prizefighter, and most recently gold miner in the Klondike -- getting by with the occasional odd job while pursuing his true vocation: writing. But Jack never expects to find himself investigating a murder case on behalf of San Francisco’s mayor. Two saloon hall girls have been killed in a similar and precise fashion that appears to be the work of a madman. Jack learns that both girls arrived in the city together on the same ship from Alaska, The Jewel of the North. And it will take all of his wit and skill to unravel a conspiracy far more dangerous than he can possibly imagine.

Dead Man’s Coast: A Jack London Mystery. New American Library, 2002.

Summary: In turn-of-the-century San Francisco, Jack London (who is just starting his career as a writer) supplements his meager income by moonlighting for the police. One night, Jack is hired to join Officer Healey on a stakeout. One of the men they are watching is safecracker Lou Kandel, a recent escapee from San Quentin. Jack and Healey get into an altercation with Kandel and another thug but they both escape. When Healey is murdered the next day, SFPD brass asks Jack, who is able to identify Kandel’s crony from mug shots, to stay on the case because they believe that a master criminal is planning to steal the Rajah’s Ruby from the visiting “Belle of Broadway,” Belle Conquest.

The Golden Gate Murders: A Jack London Mystery. New American Library, 2002.

Summary: In his early days as a struggling writer, Jack London is no stranger to crime. When the owner of a Barbary Coast saloon is killed -- just after asking Jack to look into a threat to his establishment -- Jack signs on with the Saloon Owners Association to investigate. But when the trail leads to a second murder, and lawman Wyatt Earp appears with an interest in the case, Jack wonders if he’s in over his head.

Kinlay, Alvin.

Killers Cannot Live. Micron, 1961.

Kinsburn, Emart. [Arthur Preston Hankins]

Tong Men and a Million: A Detective Story. Chelsea House, 1927.

Kirschman, Ellen.

Burying Ben. Aakenbaaken & Kent, 2013.

Summary: Dot Meyerhoff has barely settled into her new job as a psychologist for the Kenilworth Police Department when Ben Gomez, a troubled young rookie that she tries to counsel, commits suicide without any warning and leaves a note blaming her. Overnight, her promising new start becomes a nightmare. At stake is her job, her reputation, her license to practice, and her already battered sense of self-worth. Dot resolves to find out not just what led Ben to kill himself, but why her psychologist exhusband, the man she most wants to avoid, recommended that Ben be hired in the first place. Ben’s surviving family and everyone else connected to him are determined to keep Ben’s story a secret, by any means necessary. Even Ben, from the grave, has secrets to keep. Right from the start, Dot’s investigation efforts get her into trouble. First she alienates Ben’s training officer, who is barely managing to hold onto his own job. With the police chief watching over her shoulder, she tries to help the officer with disastrous consequences. After reaching out to console Ben’s pregnant -- and slightly sociopathic -- widow, Dot winds up embroiled in the affairs of her incredibly dysfunctional family. Dot’s troubles are compounded by a post-divorce romance, the ex who still has a hold over her, and an unwelcome visit from his new wife. By the time she uncovers the real reasons behind Ben’s suicide and brings the people responsible to justice, Dot has not only resurrected belief in herself, she has also acquired some surprisingly useful new skills: impersonating a public official, burglary, and assault with a deadly weapon.” Editor’s note: The fictional town of Kenilworth is based on Palo Alto in Santa Clara County.

The Right Wrong Thing. Oceanview Publishing, 2015.

| setting: “Kenilworth” [Palo Alto] | series character: Dot Meyerhoff | find it |

Summary: Officer Randy Spelling had always wanted to be a police officer, to follow in the footsteps of her brothers and her father. Not long after joining the force, she mistakenly shoots and kills Lakeisha Gibbs, a pregnant teenager. The community is outraged; Lakeisha’s family is vocal and vicious in their attacks against Spelling. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and filled with remorse, Randy is desperate to apologize to the girl’s family. Everyone, including the police chief, warns her against this, but the young officer will not be dissuaded. Her attempt is catastrophic. Dr. Dot Meyerhoff, police psychologist, plunges herself into the investigation despite orders from the police chief to back off. Not only does the psychologist’s refusal to obey orders jeopardize her career, but her life as well, as she enlists unlikely allies and unconventional undercover work to expose the tangled net of Officer Spelling’s disastrous course.

The Fifth Reflection. Oceanview Publishing, 2017.

| setting: “Kenilworth” [Palo Alto] | series character: Dot Meyerhoff |

Summary: Police psychologist Dr. Dot Meyerhoff is pulled into the vortex of a terrible crime involving an eccentric photographer whose images of nude children make her a prime suspect in the disappearance of her own daughter. The principal investigator in the case is a young officer whose dedication to work and obsession with finding the missing child is tearing his own family apart. Trapped between her allegiance to the investigator, her complicated connections to the photographer, and her unstable relationship with the police chief, Dot must find a way to help everyone involved. As Dot's psychological expertise and determination contribute to solving the mystery, her involvement with the missing child's extended, dysfunctional family brings her face-to-face with painful psychological issues of her own.

Klavan, Andrew.

Dynamite Road. Forge, 2003.

| setting: San Francisco | series characters: Scott Weiss, Jim Bishop | find it |

Summary: Jim Bishop is a hard man, as cold as the wind off the water and tough to the point of brutality. Scott Weiss is Bishop’s boss, a world-weary ex-cop who runs a private detective agency out of a concrete tower in the heart of San Francisco. Weiss sends Bishop to investigate corruption at a Northern California airport, and so sets events in motion that will lead both men on a desperate hunt for a master assassin. A death in a mansion in Presidio Heights, a seemingly random murder South of Market, an apparent suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge -- all seem to bear the mark of Weiss’ old nemesis, an expert gun-for-hire who goes by the name of the Shadowman.

Shotgun Alley. Forge, 2004.

| setting: San Francisco | series characters: Scott Weiss, Jim Bishop | find it |

Summary: Honey -- a vivacious, wealthy, seventeen-year-old daughter of a politician -- has a penchant for drug dealers, mad-dog bikers, booze, sex, crank, and guns. She’s run off with Cobra, the leader of a band of motorcycle-gang outcasts who have dubbed themselves the Outriders, having been too hotheaded and reckless for other gangs. But her father, who is running for the U.S. Senate, wants her back before she takes his career down in flames along with her hell-bent soul. Enter [private eyes] Scott Weiss and Jim Bishop. Weiss is a former cop who is an accomplished detective with a lot of connections. Bishop is a savvy, strong-willed tough guy and ladies’ man who does the legwork for Weiss’s agency. Bishop’s assignment: infiltrate the Outriders and seduce and steal Honey away from Cobra. But Cobra is brilliant as well as bad—an oddly intellectual biker who is one step ahead of everyone on his trail. And Honey is not only rich and beautiful, she is hotter than the hinges of hell, irresistibly alluring, a black widow who draws the hardest, toughest, sharpest hustlers into her lethal web -- where she consumes them whole. Bishop, falling for a woman like never before, is drawn into Honey’s web, and even with the diabolically clever Weiss in his corner -- working the cops, scheming with politicians, pulling the strings, and calling the shots -- Bishop may be going down. Has Bishop finally met his match? Is Honey too hot to handle?

Damnation Street. Harcourt, 2006.

| setting: San Francisco, Northern California | series characters: Scott Weiss, Jim Bishop | find it |

Summary: They are two sworn enemies with a single obsession: a woman on the run from them both. Scott Weiss is a [San Francisco] private detective. John Foy is a professional killer. The woman is Julie Wyant, a hooker with the face of an angel. Julie spent one night with Foy -- a night of psychopathic cruelty that Foy called love. Desperate to get away from him, she vanished without a trace. And Foy wants her back. There’s only one man who can find her: Weiss, the best locate operative in the business. She’s begged him not to look for her, fearing he’ll bring the killer in his wake. But Weiss can’t stay away. Now, from a town called Paradise, through a wilderness that feels like hell, Weiss searches for Julie -- and the killer follows, waiting for his chance. They are two expert hunters matching move for move -- until it ends in gunfire on Damnation Street.

A Strange Habit of Mind. Mysterious Press, 2022.

| setting: San Francisco | series character: Cameron Winter | find it |

Summary: The world of Big Tech is full of eccentric characters, but shamanic billionaire Gerald Byrne may be the strangest of the bunch. The founder of Byrner, a global social media platform, Byrne is known for speaking with vague profundity and for dabbling in esoteric spiritual practices; he wears his hair in a long black ponytail to reveal a large flower tattooed on his neck; he's universally admired as a visionary, a philanthropist, and a devoted husband and father. And every person who gets in the way of his good work seems to die. When a former student commits suicide, English professor and ex-spy Cameron Winter takes it upon himself to understand why. The young man was expelled from the university in an unfortunate episode that left Winter sympathetic to his plight; after a prolonged silence, he reached out to his teacher with two words just before taking the fatal plunge from the roof of his San Francisco apartment: "Help me." Winter has what he calls "a strange habit of mind" -- the ability to imagine himself into a crime scene, to reconstruct it mentally and play through various possible causes and outcomes to understand exactly what took place. When he applies this exercise to Adam Kemp's desperate final moments, he discovers a troubling inconsistency. And when he learns that Kemp was in a tumultuous relationship with Gerald Byrne's niece, he begins to suspect that the suicide was the result of a carefully-engineered plot, put in motion by the powerful businessman.

Klein, Matthew.

Switchback. Orion Books, 2006.

| setting: Palo Alto, Northern California | find it |

Summary: Timothy Van Bender, Yale graduate and hedge fund manager in Palo Alto, lives a magical life: his business mints money; his wife, Katherine, is beautiful and charming; his young sexy secretary, Tricia, greets him each morning with a flirtatious smile. Then, one Tuesday, everything changes. Timothy wakes to learn that his hedge fund has lost 24 million dollars on a bad bet against the Japanese Yen. Timothy decides to double down and bet again. But the Yen keeps climbing, and his business investors start asking questions. With his company on the brink of collapse, he gets a call from his wife, who phones to say goodbye, moments before jumping off a cliff at Big Sur to her death. Timothy can’t believe it, and nor, for that matter, can the local police.

Con Ed. Warner Books, 2007.

| setting: Palo Alto, Northern California | find it |

Summary: Kip Largo was once the best in the business. A con man’s con man. But then he spent five years in jail and lost everything except his sense of humor and a crummy little apartment in Palo Alto. Then one day he meets Lauren Napier, wife of billionaire venture capitalist Ed Napier. She wants Kip to steal her husband’s money for her, and in return, she’ll cut him in on a sizeable chunk of the proceeds. Kip’s been around long enough to know that when a beautiful woman wants something from you, all you’re gonna get in return is a whole lot of trouble. So he makes the smart choice and walks away. But soon Kip’s son shows up with a different tale of woe: he’s gotten into a really bad situation with the Russian Mafia and needs his old man’s help. Suddenly, the idea of stealing Ed Napier’s money doesn’t sound so bad. The con is on, but for Kip, the question will soon be: who’s conning whom?

Klingler, Erin.

Between the Lines. Covenant Communications, 2010.

Summary: Sydney Hallam, hard-line journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and Salt Lake Tribune reporter Justin Mickelsen team up in San Francisco to expose a scandal involving money laundering, drug trafficking, and grand theft. In the intensity of the investigation, the ace reporters’ attraction quickly grows -- and so do the tempers of certain billionaires and heavy-hitting politicians who want them dead.

Klontz, Karl C.

Stand at Bay. K.C. Klontz Publishing, 2003.

Summary: Either Troy Simon has the inside scoop on a dirty case of medical malpractice or he has unearthed a document that implicates the hospital in an insidious scheme to develop a pristine tract of land. In either case, the twenty-four-year-old medical student is forced to abandon his studies and run for his life. His fight keeps him in the cross hairs of an unyielding plot to end his life as he bolts from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Sierras and on to a remote Caribbean island

Knief, Charles.

Silversword. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Minotaur, 2001.

| setting: San Francisco; Hawaii | series character: John Caine | find it |

Summary: Hawaii private eye John Caine, still recovering from being shot at a Triad funeral in San Francisco, must stop an unscrupulous professor from stealing a fellow archaeologist's discovery while ducking a San Francisco police detective who wants him to stand trial for murder.

Knight, Clifford.

Death and Little Brother. E.P. Dutton & Company, 1952.

| setting: Lake Tahoe; San Francisco | Baird & Greenwood 1403; Herron | find it |

Summary: At Lake Tahoe, Mike Riley -- a political reporter for a Sacramento newspaper -- is on a much-needed vacation. His family owns a home there and he had grown up spending summers at the lake and falling in love with Charlotte Kersey, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy San Francisco family who also own a Tahoe home. Shortly after Mike arrives, the teenage son of the Kerseys’ maid is found dead in his small boat in the middle of the lake. He’s got a bullet in the middle of his back. Then the Kersey matriarch, Grandma Whitfield, is found murdered in her bedroom, her throat slashed. Although there are plenty of suspects in both killings, everyone’s favorite is Charlotte’s younger brother, Lloyd, who has recently beaten a murder rap in New York for lack of evidence. But is he really guilty, or is someone trying to frame him? Mike thinks he’s a louse (his opinion of Lloyd is the main reason he and Charlotte were never able to make anything of their mutual attraction to each other), but he doesn’t believe him capable of murder. As the local cops and the newspapers descend onto the scene, Mike is torn between his duties as a reporter and his desire to protect Charlotte and, by extension, her brother.

Editor's note: Although very little of the action takes place in the Bay Area -- both funerals are conducted in San Francisco, but neither the crimes nor any investigation take place there -- Baird & Greenwood list San Francisco as a locale and Don Herron included this title in his original checklist of San Francisco mystery fiction.

Knight, J. D.

Zero Tolerance. Dell Publishing, 1995.

Knowles, David.

The Secrets of the Camera Obscura. Chronicle Books, 1994.

Kohler, Hannah.

The Outside Lands. St. Martin's Press, 2016.

| setting: San Francisco (1968) | find it |

Summary: San Francisco, 1968: Jeannie and Kip are lost and half-orphaned, their mother dead under mysterious circumstances, and their father -- a decorated WWII veteran -- consumed by guilt and losing sight of his teenage children. Kip, a dreamer and swaggerer prone to small-time trouble, enlists to fight in Vietnam; Jeannie finds a seemingly safe haven in early marriage and motherhood. But when Kip is accused of a terrible military crime, Jeannie is seduced -- sexually, emotionally, politically -- into joining an ambiguous anti-war organization. As Jeannie attempts to save her brother, her search for the truth leads her into two dangerous relationships, with a troubled young woman, and a grievously-wounded veteran, that might threaten her marriage, her child, and perhaps her life.

Koller, Dennis.

These Violent Delights. 1st Books Library, 2001.

| setting: San Francisco | tpo | find it |

Summary: The gruesome murders of four women force San Francisco police inspector Tom McGuire to confront a past he desperately wants to forget. As a former prisoner of war in the famed Hanoi Hilton, McGuire discovers that the murder of four anti-war women activists was an act of revenge 25 years removed. McGuire and the beautiful witness to one of the crimes come to realize that the murderer has not yet finished his grisly work. In a race against time, McGuire is caught in a dilemma between his sworn duty as a police officer and his belief in the military oath he took so long ago -- and finds himself drawn into a political quagmire from which no one can emerge a winner.

The Oath. Pen Books, 2016.

Summary: A lifetime ago, a young naval aviator took the Oath. Tom McGuire, now a San Francisco PD homicide inspector, hadn't thought about that Oath in years. That was all about to change. A famous San Francisco newspaper columnist has been murdered. Some would say 'executed.' Shot through the head, her arms tried behind her, knotted together from shoulder to wrist. McGuire feels an eerie chill of recognition. After being shot down over North Vietnam, he suffered through seven years as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, enduring rope torture many times -- his arms tied in exactly the same way. A lifetime ago, another young naval aviator also took that Oath. He also was shot down over North Vietnam, and joined McGuire as a POW in Hanoi. His interpretation of the Oath differs from McGuire's. After thirty years, their lives were about to intersect once again.

Koretsky, J. Lea.

Trojan Park: A California Mystery. Regent Press, 2011.

| setting: Berkeley; San Francisco | tpo | find it |

Krejcik, Patrick.

Sand Hill Road. Palo Alto Venture Publishing, 2015.

| setting: Silicon Valley | tpo | find it |

Summary: Chaos grips Silicon Valley largest venture capital firms as a financial collapse looms. Enter Massimo, a physicist at Stanford accelerator lab on Sand Hill Road. Using a formula originally developed for high energy physics for predicting chaos he discovers he can successfully forecast stock market trends. Abruptly, he is swept up in a maelstrom of events as his fledgling startup company is seized in a series of convoluted mergers, involving the largest venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road. Aware of the disturbing applications his formula may be used for, he tries to follow the oblique money trail of his new angel investors, but is utterly unprepared for the gold rush mentality of Silicon Valley Enterprise. Can the physicist match wits with the shrewd VC? Massimo fatalistic urge to prove his theory for predicting chaos may be his demise as he seeks to expose the mastermind behind the impending banking scandal that dwarfs even the excesses of Wall Street.

Kudlinski, Kathleen V.

Shannon, Lost and Found: San Francisco, 1880. Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997.

Summary: When Shannon and her friends conduct a book drive in their San Francisco neighborhood in 1880 to benefit the new library, they must solve a mystery quickly.

Kushner, Rachel.

The Mars Room. Scribner, 2018.

| setting: San Francisco | find it |

Summary: It's 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living.

Kuttner, Henry.

The Murder of Ann Avery. Permabooks, 1956.

Summary: At least seven people wanted Ann Avery dead. San Francisco psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Gray investigates a dope addict, a lush, a big spender (on a teacher’s salary), a gang leader, a tough kid with a penchant for violence, a jealous husband, and a reluctant witness who hides explosive evidence. Gray sets out to see if one of these people may be her killer, knowing that one or more of them will most likely also be killed.

The Murder of Eleanor Pope. Permabooks, 1956.

Summary: San Francisco psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Gray learns about the murder of Eleanor Pope from Howard Dunne, one of his patients. The police think that the murder was the result of a bungled burglary. After talking more with Dunne, Dr. Gray is certain that the killer will strike again.

Murder of a Mistress. Permabooks, 1957.

Summary: A high-priced call girl who knew too much about too many men -- and they had too much to lose if she talked -- is found murdered. Four people confess to her murder, including Eileen Herrick, whose father was one of the murdered girl’s lovers. San Francisco psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Gray, who has been counseling Eileen, does not believe that she -- or any of the others -- is guilty. He discovers that the dead woman’s sister was also killed several months earlier. The police, however, are convinced that Eileen is the murderess and have no interest in further investigation. Then one of the confessors is murdered and an attempt is made on Dr. Gray’s life, convincing him that the murders are connected and the killer is still at large.

Murder of a Wife. Permabooks, 1958.

Summary: San Francisco psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Gray tries to help a woman who is considered to be a pathological liar. She claims her husband has been trying to kill her. To find out the truth Gray follows the clues to a quack doctor, a “dirty” private eye, and to a killer who found that one vicious killing was only the beginning.

Kuttner, Paul.

Absolute Proof. Dawnwood Press, 1984.

Kyne, Peter B.

Golden dawn. Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1930.

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