Kat Colorado -- "a private eye with a sense of fun and brains to spare" --The New York Times Book Review -- agrees to protect an abused wife from her homicidal husband, only to find herself wandering a twisted trail of deceit and deadly menace.

From Kirkus: Reeling from the murder of her fianceé Hank Parker (Kat Scratch Fever, 1997), Kat Colorado is in no mood to buy into Sara Bernard's sad tale of sposal abuse. She tells Sara to call the cops and leave her alone. But Sara can't call the cops, she wails; her husband Jed is a cop; nobody can help her but Kat. Kat insults Sara, hangs up on her, turns her out into the street. When a friend of Sara's is wrestled from a riverside path into the river and drowned, though, Kat agrees to take the case, meets with Jed Bernard, and hears his version of the marriage (duly seconded by all his friends): Sara's wild accusations are hysterical, and Jed's a put-upon husband who likes to coach inner-city basketball games and never raises his voice. Caught between an alleged abuser whom she's caught stalking his wife, trespassing on her property, and burglarizing her stuff, and her client, a world-class whiner who alternates between tearful reproaches and suspicious disappearing acts, Kat takes a closer look at the Bernards and finds that she can't trust either of them. So whose story should she believe, and what's behind the lies she's getting from at least one of them? The he-said/she-said of Kijewski's ninth packs as much unfocused intensity as Sara's complaints, but the lumbering pace and Kat's gee-whiz undercover work make this less than Kat's finest hour.

From The Publisher: Kat has seen -- and lived through -- just about everything. But when the unsolved murder of a cop hits too close to home, she suddenly finds herself very vulnerable. Struggling to survive a mind-numbing personal loss, Kat doesn't want to take on a new client. Sara Bernard, the abused and frightened wife of another cop, won't let her off the hook, and a reluctant Kat is pulled back to work and into a frenzied and dangerous dance. Things get ugly fast. Kat is almost killed by someone trying to scare her off the Bernard case. Sara survives a murder attempt, which claims a friend's life, and commences a series of mystifying disappearing acts, apparently on the run from her husband. But everybody who knows Sacramento cop Jed Bernard claims he's the greatest guy in town, a real straight-shooter. It's clear that somebody's not on the level -- but who? Before she can solve the puzzle, Kat must go undercover at a stylish rehab clinic -- where getting better seems to be the furthest thing from anyone's mind....