All Choked Up

Publisher Marketing: Gabriel Sands has a new partner, Detective Sebastian Lang, formerly of the Chicago Police Department. He's a bit of a fop and he's not perfect but he's a crack shot and an absolute brick under pressure. What the Pittsburgh P. D. detective doesn't know is that Lang murdered a suspect in Chicago, altered the evidence a little too well and then moved because the hero worship from the press was getting altogether too revealing. And what Lang doesn't know is that his victim was the protege of a serial killer who just happened to be hiding nearby when he pulled the trigger and splattered the man's brains from Chicago to Sheboygan then ever so calmly and ever so deliberately put a new spin on the crime. It's so hard to find a perfect successor. Proteges come and proteges go. You want them to succeed, you want them to be happy but they always let you down. Take the serial killer's two new ones, for instance. Grist for the mill, sacrificial lambs, fodder for that canon Lang carries on his belt or two acts in a bold and bloody plan to make Lang the ally he always wanted? And poor Gabriel, burly and blunt and defending Lang at every step of the way as the serial killer sets the fop up but peel away one little lie... It's funny how things change, now that he's the only one who doesn't think Lang is the Second Coming. And who can blame them? Sebastian Lang is a great guy. He's charming and well-mannered, handsome and intelligent, and if he has a flaw it's that every once in a while he just has to go out and kill somebody.