[Harper and Hidalgo 01] • The Best Bad Dream

A fed's debt to a sexy snitch leads to a darkly funny nightmare of double-crosses and sinister motives: "Ward is simply the best" (Michael Connelly).

All FBI Agent Jack Harper wants is a heavenly vacation in Baja: sand, surf, and fishing. Then he gets a phone call from hell: it's his for-lack-of-a-better-word girlfriend, Michelle Wu. The hot con-artist, and irresistible chop-shop queen needs Jack's help in finding her kidnapped sister, a nurse working a posh Taos health spa for seniors. Michelle's got an idea who'd gain from it: a biker she wronged who's got a rotten sweet tooth for revenge. But Jack must be nuts to think the case would end with a homicidal gang called Sons of Satan. It's just beginning, and where it leads Jack, his partner Oscar Hidalgo, and Michelle is down a dark road with so many sharp turns and twists it could snap a neck.

So buckle up for The Best Bad Dream by the PEN West prize-winning "heir to the pulp fiction tradition" (BookReporter.com). And we dare you: "Name another novel that starts out with New Age satire and winds up with a bizarro oldster version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ward's no-holds-barred style and fevered imagination will . . . hit the spot for a special kind of bent reader" ( Booklist ).