The Third Figure

A mob boss is dead, and his widow wants Drake to help him rest in peaceDominic Vennezio is found on the floor of his beachside love nest, murdered on a Sunday night. It looks like an ordinary mob hit, part of a routine power struggle with the East Coast Outfit, but Vennezio’s widow has other suspicions. Her marriage to the kingpin had been strained ever since he began taking his secretary for weekends at the beach house, but even now, she feels a devotion to him. She wants justice for her husband—not just legal, but cosmic—and for cosmic justice, San Francisco can offer no better sleuth than Stephen Drake.A crime reporter with a clairvoyant streak, Drake’s apprehensions about working for the mob are overcome by his sympathy for the noble widow. He starts his investigation in Los Angeles, talking to Vennezio’s replacement, and sees immediately that it doesn’t take a psychic to figure out that this job could be deadly.Review“Collin Wilcox gets better and better.” —Tony Hillerman“One of the three best mystery writers in America, his stories and characters as real as a clenched fist.” —Jack Finney, author of Time and Again“[An] old pro.” —Kirkus ReviewsAbout the AuthorCollin 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.