Merci Rayborn Series

Intricately plotted and surprisingly moving, THE BLUE HOUR is T. Jefferson Parker’s most compelling – and satisfying – thriller yet, from the NYT bestselling author and three-time Edgar Award winner. Tim Hess is a semi-retired homicide cop staring at his own death sentence – lung cancer. Time is running out. Thrice divorced and childless, Hess is the classic loner cop – so he’s happy to accept the difficult job offered to him: find and stop a serial killer who’s been abducting beautiful young women in Orange County. His new partner, and boss, is the brash, ambitious Merci Rayborn. She’s unpopular and unloved by her fellow cops, but she’s also relentless, smart and principled. Hess, challenged by the investigation and by his own disease, isn't happy about taking orders from Merci, and he certainly isn't planning for her to fall in love with him… “What distinguishes this moving book are the finely defined characters, the author’s accomplished style (which sketches his Orange County turf and surf in vivid strokes) and the tale’s unexpected twists.” – Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal “The crimes are sickening, the killer is a monster, and the gadgets of destruction are truly bizarre. Solid police work, beefed up with some ingenious devices from Parker’s bottomless bag of tricks, makes it all come out right—but not before the wondrously weird characters have taken this lurid plot to its outer limits.” – Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Unpredictable and dynamic… far more gripping than your average serial-killer thriller … Sure-handed thriller writer Parker proves ever-surprising.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A richly metaphoric and suspenseful ride to the end … Ah, Parker in top form.” – Kirkus Reviews

Two years after the conclusion of The Blue Hour, Merci and her son are living with her father. She's also dating Mike McNally, a respected fellow officer. Merci and Mike are the golden couple on the force, and even if Merci doesn't passionately love him, there's a sort of comfortable inevitability to it all. But everything explodes when a young prostitute is found brutally murdered and Mike emerges as the primary suspect. The lead investigator on the case, Merci must do the unthinkable—expose and arrest her lover. Sifting through the clues with a growing sense of panic and outrage in her gut, Merci has to work hard to balance where the truth is leading her against where her heart is telling her to go. Meanwhile, an old unsolved case from the sixties is thrown on her desk—the murder of Patti Bailey, another prostitute with ties to the force—and the two cases conspire to turn Merci's world upside down.