A Mystery Lover's  Bookshelf, April 2012

Elvis Cole is a smoothly competent southern California private investigator with a penchant for getting his clients out of trouble and himself into it. So it is that when Cole is retained by a wealthy industrialist to retrieve her missing son --- and, incidentally, his secret Hispanic girlfriend --- and soon finds himself up to his neck in difficulties with some ruthless border kidnappers who have a murderous racket going. Cole’s loyal pal Joe Pike is a quietly dangerous force of nature himself, but even he is challenged in this latest installment of a long-running and deservedly popular series.