The Wages of Crime

Meet … -Lieutenant Caldera, the homicide detective who inhabits six of these stories and has more enemies than friends. -a documentary film crew that stumbles onto a myth-shattering letter from Vincent Van Gogh. -a wealthy Seattle man who frames his own twin for murder.

Encounter … -a foundling wheel in the heart of 1930s London that is also a wheel of secrets and lies. -a sheriff in the Old West who uses the law as a shield against the discovery of his trail of abuse. -a woman who exacts revenge against a friend’s captor but may have misjudged the situation. -a lawyer who uncovers an assassination plot in Seattle, with its origin, and resolution, in Berlin.

Witness … -a hot-air balloon that goes up with three passengers but comes down with only two. -a corporate climber who acquires an office with a terrific view, and a terrifying drop. -a man abducted into a paranoid nightmare that turns out to be neither paranoid nor a nightmare.

Discover, in other words, the wages of crime, but with this for a warning: the deeper you descend into some pits, the harder it is to climb back out again-if it can ever be the same you who emerges.