Book excerpt: When the police receive reports of a ghostly figure appearing at the dead of night in a local graveyard, Detective Chief Inspector John Blizzard cannot take the matter seriously. But the smile fades from his face when the figure commits its first murder, brutally dashing the brains from a local drug dealer. Realizing that the unearthly apparition is very much human, Blizzard and his team of detectives find themselves conducting investigations in one of the city's most affluent suburbs. And what they find behind the respectable facade is a world of seething feuds, deep-rooted fears, and plenty of people with a motive to kill.