Forty Thieves

From "New York Times" bestselling author Thomas Perry comes a whip-smart and lethally paced standalone novel, "Forty Thieves." Sid and Ronnie Abel are a husband-and-wife detective team, both ex-LAPD. Ed and Nicole Hoyt are assassins-for-hire living in the San Fernando Valley. Except for deadly aim with a handgun, the two couples have little in commonuntil both are hired to do damage control on the same murder case. The previous spring, a body was recovered from a storm sewer after two days of torrential rain. The corpse was identified as James Ballantine, a middle-aged African American who worked as a research scientist and was killed by two bullets to the back of the head. With the murder case turning cold, Ballantine s former employers bring in the Abels to succeed where the police have failed, while the Hoyts mysterious contractors want to make sure that the facts about Ballantine s death stay hidden. Dramatic car chases, illicit affairs, and a notorious ring of Eastern European diamond thieves all play into the plot as the book races toward its high-octane climax, and the Abels circle ever closer to the dangerous truth."