Book excerpt: “Evokes the gritty classics of Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson while spinning its own brand of hard-boiled psychological suspense.” —Kirkus Reviews Three years ago, working vice for the NYPD, Dan Champion infiltrated a world of sexual obsession and perversity. He broke the case, but the case also broke him. He started taking drugs and soon began to form hallucinations . . . a dead child prowling the streets of New York . . . a beautiful woman named Samantha who would have given him the love he always wanted—if she’d only been real. Now the ghosts and hallucinations are finally behind Champion, as he begins to rebuild his life as a small town detective. Then one night he is called to examine the body of a woman who has washed ashore. Yet when he looks at her face, he sees that it’s Samantha, the woman he dreamed about long ago . . . a woman who doesn’t exist. Suddenly, Champion must figure out the truth about his past and about a killer who has been on the run—in the wind—for a lifetime. The ghosts of the dead are all around him, and Champion has to find out who murdered them, fast, or he could become one of them himself. “After reading his latest, A Killer in the Wind, I came away convinced that Klavan is worthy to be mentioned with Keith Ablow, Jonathan Kellerman, Andrew Vachss, James Patterson, and even Stephen King.” —The Huntington News