Pretty Ballerina: A Novel

The Story

It's a Sunday in late July and Harding, private investigator, is riding down a rain-slick road with Cassie Rayn, a one-time porn star, headed for the house where she grew up. Harding's a man of many talents, or at least many jobs - cabbie, tour guide, private detective. The truth is that Harding has to take whatever job comes along. Since a manslaughter conviction cost him his license and his legitimate clients, the detective work that's been coming his way has ranged from the barely legal to the slightly impossible. Cassie started telling him the story of a runaway boy's disappearance twenty-two years ago. And how two years later, the boy's sister hid in a basement while upstairs the rest of her family were murdered. The boy was never found. The crime was never solved. Cassie Rayn is that sister, and now she's begun to receive terrifying anonymous messages, strange reminders of the most horrible night of her life and stranger hints that her brother might be alive. When Harding takes the case, the only things he knows for certain are that their search has stirred up something ugly and if he can't get to the bottom of this soon, his client's life will be snuffed out.