Author: Raymond Obstfeld

Stevie Croft, 30, Orange County’s most successful prosecutor, is running a losing campaign for district attorney when she is assigned to the most heinous crime in the county’s history. A “body” is discovered composed of the severed parts of five different people of varying ages and sexes, all crudely sewn together to form one grotesque corpse. Brought into the case by her deputy sheriff ex-husband, Stevie has the chance to ride this high-profile case right into office. But there are complications. The killer begins leaving cryptic messages for Stevie in her home, in her office, even in her purse. Calling himself The Tutor, he claims that deciphering these clues will not only lead her to his identity, but save the lives of his future victims. He knows she’ll be able to decipher the clues because he knows her darkest secret: since she was ten, Stevie has had “hyper-memory,” a combination of photographic memory and total recall. She can remember exactly everything she’s ever seen, heard, or read.  But to Stevie her “gift” is a curse she has kept secret from everyone but her father and sister.

Her father, a famous author and advisor to presidents, is quickly arrested for the murders. Any attempts to clear him could be seen as favoritism and cost her the election. Add to that the fact that a sinister government agent has been following her and two FBI agents have demanded involvement in the case, without telling her why.

Everything now seems to rest on Stevie’s ability to figure out the clues and find The Tutor before he kills again. But the danger with her hyper-memory is that she has been suffering from increasingly painful migraines. And the constant memory “floods” (enormous rushes of random memories) that she experiences threaten to fry her brain, leaving her in a coma.

As her pain increases, so do the killer’s clues. She must hold on long enough to find The Tutor, save her father, and prevent more savage killings.

The disappearance of a teenaged girl draws former Los Angeles detective Mike Travis away from his scuba charter business and into the bowels of an underground culture driven by designer-narcotics and violent sex. What he uncovers is a world built on secrets, and entire lives built on lies.

But as Travis unravels one set of deceits, he finds himself confronted with visions of his own past, his own complicity in an act of shocking cruelty. His investigation glimpses a hellish side of paradise unseen by tourists, painted with the dark brushstrokes of hardboiled tropical noir. 

ANGELS FALL is the story of one man’s desire to outrun the corrosive powers of vast wealth and personal vengeance, while attempting to tame the demons that dwell in his own dark and violent past. It is the story of the cost of moral corruption and the high price of redemption, played out against a backdrop of coffee fields and lush jungle, of rich sunsets and coconut palms, of trade winds and the rhythmic swell of the Hawaiian sea.