A Punishing Breed

<p><strong><em>*Recommended in </em>The New York Times*</strong></p><p><strong><em>A Punishing Breed</em> the first in a series of novels featuring Detective DJ Arias is a murder mystery that takes place in Los Angeles the city of angels freeways Santa Ana winds and honeysuckle slithering through chain-link fences and perfuming LA's dark streets and neighborhoods. </strong></p>
<p>Detective Arias hunts for a murderer on a liberal arts campus that prides itself on its progressive curriculum but is rife with jealousy racial and sexual tensions and a hierarchy as real and destructive as a medieval fortress. DJ Arias good at his job because he sees the worst in people is challenged by the college community a neighborhood recluse and a young Latino gardener he sent to jail ten years ago for a hit-and-run accident. Through the course of his investigation Arias will find out no one is who they appear to be. He begins to reclaim his humanity by adopting a dog he names Evidence and finding the clues to a crime born from a dark secret not contained in the past but alive in the present which will cast destruction and murder on the denizens of the small liberal arts campus.</p>