The Only Truth That Matters

Five years after the events in The Truth Won't Help Them Now, a series of murders reunites a pair of reluctant partners in a hunt for two vicious killers in Southern California. Now, May 1944, citizens anxiously await the Allied invasion of Europe while a gang war is brewing in the streets of Los Angeles. Cliff Thoms, an attorney forced from the DA's office and now in private practice, and Lou Gomez, a homicide detective dogged by his checkered past, encounter gangsters fighting for control of the black market, the staff and patrons of illegal casinos, and a movie studio fixer who will go to any lengths to make problems disappear.The story provides a window on the wartime home front and the realities of the air war in the deadly skies over Germany as we follow the trials of Cliff 's client, Zoe, and her family. While her husband and older son are employed by mobsters and her younger son serves as a bombardier overseas, Zoe, business consultant and psychic, assists Lou and Cliff in their search for the killers providing her special help that is both more and less than it seems. We are left wondering whether her warnings, like those of a present day Cassandra, will go unheeded.Once again, Cliff and Lou struggle to sort through lies and betrayals, and mete out some rough justice for the families who have lost children to the war in the City of Angels. As the characters wrestle with the big and little truths in their lives, love, war, and death force them to acknowledge the only truth that matters.