Deadline: Stiff

Freshly returned from military police duty in Iraq, young David Endicott stumbles into his first case by rescuing a corpse from an eccentric billionaire’s guesthouse. With eyebrows raised, Baulden Grey asks Endicott to discover three things in seven frenetic days: Who the man was; how he gained entry to the heavily protected grounds; and what he wanted once inside.

It all sounded so simple, so deliciously straightforward, and it might have been, except for the powdered wings of a rare Chinese butterfly. For the Golden Yellow possesses a secret powerful enough to change the face of gang crime in Southern California. And beyond …

Based on little-known facts about the U.S. Human Betterment Foundation that fueled the German Nazi Party’s racial cleansing movement, Deadline: Stiff weaves an historic past into a frightening future wherein the lay lines of change posit a credible, terrifying reality.

Look out, Darwin, this deadline gives “survival of the fittest” an entirely new meaning for David Endicott – and a world in which violence is a curable disease.