The Debt Collector

On a warm March evening in Cincinnati, detective Sonora Blair says good-bye to her two teenage children, drives to a neat suburban neighborhood, and walks through the door of a "home invasion"--a shocking mass murder scene. Thus begins Lynn Hightower's latest novel, a masterpiece of suspense that combines meticulous procedural detail with page-turning storytelling. From its opening scene to its stunning climax, The Debt Collector is at once chilling, thought-provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.

"No survivors," Sonora Blair said to herself when she and her partner, Sam, arrived at the crime scene. A typical American family lived here. In the driveway, a car is left behind in a hurry, its door open, its battery nearly dead. Before she followed Sam inside, Sonora knew what was waiting. She just didn't know how bad it would look, how bizarre the evidence would be, and how powerfully a dying woman's last words would echo in her mind: "The Angel."

Within hours Sonora had gotten over the shock. She'd gone home, checked on her kids, and washed the blood off her nice white blouse. Before long she'd be setting off to find a killer--or maybe two. That's when the case takes a sudden, strange turn. A retired cop, legendary to those who worked with him, practically hands Sonora the suspects on a plate: their names, histories, even where they can be found. But among her fellow cops Sonora alone believes there is something more to this case. A third man. Or an angel...

In The Debt Collector, Lynn Hightower chillingly captures the collision of a horrific crime with the ordinary lives of its victims. But another life is at stake here. The life of a woman who can't mother her children the way she wishes she could, who misses people she once loved, and who even longs quietly for another chance at romance. And while one family has been wiped out by savage killers, the life of this good cop is at risk now. Because as Sonora moves further and further down a trail full of shocking surprises, bitter revelations, and unpaid debts, she now knows one thing for sure: how close she is getting to the edge.