Dominick Dunn is in people acquisition. When the phone rings he shuffles off to the far corners of the globe to retrieve the captured, then turns them over to his employer. He doesn’t actually believe these people are immortal, but the pay is good and he likes to travel. Despite rumors that his quarry meets an unthinkable fate at the hands of his employer, he’s content with his lot in life.

Aaron Wessker is miserable. His life has not gone according to plan. Trapped in a dead end job bartending in Vegas, he longs for a family he lacks, or at least the possibility of a girlfriend.

Their lives are about to intersect, causing them both to rethink their place in the world. More importantly they will have to change their opinions of the possibility of immortality.

Unfortunately for both of them they will have to do this very quickly. Dunn’s quarry is also being pursued by something much more deadly than his employers.

Junior Bender, the clown prince of crime fiction, returns in his most hardboiled adventure yet—a tale that will take Junior Bender deep into a murderous conspiracy in present day Los Angeles and  uncover an increasingly confusing legacy of his burglar-mentor, Herbie Mott, who until very recently was always one-step-ahead of just about everybody.

It’s everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley’s top “executive crook,” sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, ensuring that the hitter doesn’t know who hired him. But one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper on which he has written the names of the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can approach to solve his problem is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.

But Junior already knows exactly who took Wattles’s list: the signature is too obvious.