MISSING PERSONS is the first book in the new Buddy Steel mystery series by New York Times bestselling author Michael Brandman.

Steel --- smart, aggressive, ironic, spare and cynical --- has been content working homicide at the LAPD until his father, the legendary Sheriff Burton Steel, falls ill with Lou Gehrig's disease. Sheriff Steel is headquartered in Freedom, a privileged coastal community located a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. His health failing, he asks his son Buddy to come home to cover his back and to groom him to be his successor.

Buddy reluctantly agrees. He returns to Freedom despite having outgrown its small town limits, wary of his father's authoritarianism.

No sooner does he hit town than Buddy learns the wife of the high-flying star of a Freedom based world-renowned television ministry has gone missing. A visit to the woman's home leads to a hostile confrontation with her husband's family and Buddy's realization that something greater than simply a missing person is at stake.

Allegiance between father and son provides the backdrop for Buddy's complex investigation of twisted families, avaricious con artists, violent gangs, drugs, corruption and murder. And added to the mix is an enigmatic femme fatale who succeeds in upending Buddy's tenets regarding contemporary relationships.

MISSING PERSONS is its own book, yet crime fiction fans will find it a joy to trace its literary lineage from Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker through to Sue Grafton and Michael Connelly.

Audiobook available, read by Alex Knox