L.A. OUTLAWS
Los Angeles is gripped by the exploding celebrity of Allison Murietta, her real
identity unknown, a modern-day Jesse James with the compulsion to steal
beautiful things, the vanity to invite the media along, and the conscience to
donate much of her bounty to charity. Nobody ever gets hurt - until a job ends
with ten gangsters lying dead and a half-million dollars worth of glittering
diamonds missing. Rookie Deputy Charlie Hood discovers the bodies, and he
prevents an eyewitness - a schoolteacher named Suzanne Jones - from leaving the
scene in her Corvette. Drawn to a mysterious charisma that has him off-balance
from the beginning, Hood begins an intense affair with Suzanne. As the media
frenzy surrounding Allison’s exploits swells to a fever pitch and the
Southland’s most notorious killer sets out after her, a glimmer of recognition
blooms in Hood, forcing him to choose between a deeply held sense of honor and
a passion that threatens to consume him completely. With a stone-cold killer
locked in relentless pursuit, Suzanne and Hood continue their desperate dance
around the secrets that brought them together, unsure whether each new dawn may
signal the day their lies catch up with them.
THE RENEGADES
Some say that outlaws no longer exist, that the true spirit of the American
West died with the legendary bandits of pulp novels and bedtime stories.
Charlie Hood knows that nothing could be further from the truth. These days he
patrols vast stretches of the new American West, not on horseback but in his
cruiser. The outlaws may not carry six-shooters, but they’re strapped all the
same. Along the desolate and dusty roads of this new frontier, Hood prefers to
ride alone, and he prefers to ride at night. At night, his headlights
illuminate only the patch of pavement ahead of him: all the better to hide from
the demons―and the dead outlaws―receding in his rearview mirror. But he doesn’t
always get what he wants―certainly not when he’s assigned a partner named Terry
Laws, a county veteran who everyone calls “Mr. Wonderful.” And not when Laws is
shot dead in the passenger seat and Hood is left to bear witness to someone who
knew that Mr. Wonderful didn’t always live up to his nickname. As he sets out
to find the gunman, Hood knows one thing for sure: The West is a state of mind,
one where the bad guys sometimes wear white hats―and the good guys seek justice
in whatever shade of gray they can find it.