Sugar skull - Denise Hamilton

The body count this weekend is twenty-eight - and rising fast. Across the city, people are killing each other in gruesome ways. And Eve Diamond is writing it all down in her routine roundup story for the LA Ties. Then a distraught man bursts into the newsroom complaining about the police's apathy over the disappearance of his runaway daughter.

To complicate matters, Eve is assigned to cover a potentially huge story involving a mayoral candidate and his Italian wife, Venus - whose body was discovered floating naked in her pool. Who killed Venus? And what is the significance of the sugar skulls - little confections for the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday - that Eve keeps seeing everywhere?

Eve tries to understand how vice, greed and the drive for power can transcend even the most entrenched of class divides. And with her own life ultimately on the line, she must beat incredible odds to derail the murder conviction of the wrong person.