Missing Persons - Couverture souple

MISSING PERSONS is the first book in the new Buddy Steel mystery series by New York Times best selling 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.

Michael Brandman is the author of three Jesse Stone novels, each based on characters created by Robert B. Parker, all on the New York Times Best Sellers list. With his longtime partner, Tom Selleck, he produced and co-wrote nine Jesse Stone movies and three Westerns. His and Emanuel Azenberg's production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award for Best Picture. He has produced more than forty motion pictures including films written by Arthur Miller, Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon, David Mamet, Horton Foote, Wendy Wasserstein; David Hare, and Athol Fugard. He is the father of two sons and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Joanna Miles.