A bunch of kids from a Catholic School on a school trip to the Museum of National History seems like a safe day out. But when the nuns counted heads outside the building, young Joyce McCauley was missing. The Feds, believing it to be a snatch, are waiting for the ransom note to turn up.
But Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of the LAPD has other suspicions. He has been working with violence and death longer than he cares to remember and has seen it all. Mendoza is certain some nut has kidnapped Joyce, and sets about tracing the girl in his suave, tough and matchless fashion.
'A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times
In her 67 years, California author Elizabeth Linington wrote 82 crime fiction novels, under her own name as well as the aliases Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill and Dell Shannon. Her writing evolved from the early radio and stage dramas, via historical narratives, to her most celebrated novels - mysteries. She was nominated for Edgars in 1961, 1962 and 1963 for Case Pending, Nightmare and Knave of Hearts respectively. Her most successful creation, debonair LAPD Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, broke new ground in being one of the first Latino police officers in the procedural genre, and Linington herself was a pioneer in a male-dominated industry, earning the moniker 'Queen of the Procedurals'.