No Time to Mourn — Tim Wohlforth

A shape bends over a drink at the end of the bar in Big Emma's on Oakland's Jack London Square, looking like a bundle of black clothes someone has left on the barstool. Full red lips that match brightly dyed hair provide the only color, as if an artist had begun to colorize her just before she walked out of frame in a 40's noir movie. Her name is Susan, and she is there to hire PI Jim Wolf to find the killer of her husband, and to protect her from a man called Red. Wolf takes her case, but Susan herself is then murdered and Red attempts to kill Wolf...and the hunter becomes the hunted. With the help of two very different, but important women in his life, Lori Mazzetti, his former lover whom he can no longer live with, but can't seem to survive without, and Connie Hernandez, an investigative reporter for the Oakland Tribune, Wolf sets out to track Red down. Now it's personal. The bullets fly, and the blood flows, but Wolf is just getting started. Like the alpha predator of his namesake, private investigator Jim Wolf is the last guy you'd ever want to see coming behind you, following in your tracks. Or at your door.