Hire a Hangman

By Collin Wilcox

A surgeon is gunned down in the street -- but who is the woman who wanted him dead?.

Brice Hanchett is a brilliant surgeon, and those who work alongside the man consider him either godlike or devilish. After years of success, he has begun to believe his own legend, and soon goes too far -- toying not just with life and death, but with the heart of every woman he meets. He has a wife and a mistress, as well as the attention of all the nurses in the hospital. One of them is waiting for him when he goes out to his Jaguar, a gun in her hand. It takes only two shots to remind Brice Hanchett that even the finest surgeon cannot cheat death.

Investigating the case falls to Lieutenant Frank Hastings and the boys in San Francisco Homicide. Learning that the killer was female should narrow the search, but with a victim like Hanchett, any woman -- in scrubs or out -- could be a suspect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784089191

Collin Wilcox

Collin Wilcox (1924–1996) was an American author of mystery fiction. Born in Detroit, he set most of his work in San Francisco, beginning with 1967’s The Black Door—a noir thriller starring a crime reporter with extrasensory perception. Under the pen name Carter Wick, he published several standalone mysteries including The Faceless Man (1975) and Dark House, Dark Road (1982), but he found his greatest success under his own name, with the celebrated Frank Hastings series. Hastings, a football player turned San Francisco homicide detective, made his debut in The Lonely Hunter (1969), and Wilcox continued to follow him for the rest of his career, publishing nearly two dozen novels in the series, which concludes with Calculated Risk (1995). Wilcox’s other best-known series stars Alan Bernhardt, a theatrical director with a habit of getting involved in behind-the-scenes mysteries. Bernhardt appeared in four more books after his introduction in 1988’s Bernhardt’s Edge.