Dead Aim

Lt. Hastings #3

by Collin Wilcox

A pair of murders leaves Hastings torn between following his orders and listening to his gut.

After nearly a decade as a San Francisco cop, Frank Hastings is becoming something of a stranger to kindness. He feels perfectly at home in the Draper household -- a rundown Victorian not far from the streets on which he grew up -- where a social worker has been beaten to death by a man hiding in the bushes. The crime looks like a mugging, but something in the husband's manner tells Hastings there are secrets hidden in this shabby middle-class home.

He's closing in on the answers when a double homicide in posh Pacific Heights draws his attention away. Fearing bad publicity, his superiors tell him to drop everything and focus on this new killing, but Hastings can't get his mind off the death of Susan Draper. As he divides his time between the two murders, Hastings finds that for a man at home with cruelty, kindness can be terrifying.

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Aka Carter Wick

Collin Wilcox was an American mystery writer.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, his first book was The Black Door (1967), featuring a sleuth possessing extrasensory perception. His major series of novels was about Lieutenant Frank Hastings of the San Francisco Police Department. Titles in the Hastings series included Hire a Hangman, Dead Aim, Hiding Place, Long Way Down and Stalking Horse. Two of his last books, Full Circle and Find Her a Grave, featured a new hero-sleuth, Alan Bernhardt, an eccentric theater director. Wilcox also published under the pseudonym "Carter Wick".

Wilcox's most famous series-detective was the television character Sam McCloud, a New Mexico deputy solving New York crime. The "urban cowboy" was played by Dennis Weaver in the 1970-1977 TV series McCloud. Wilcox wrote three novelizations based on scripts from the series: McCloud (1973), The New Mexican Connection (1974), and The Park Avenue Executioner (1975).

Reviews

[Yves Lefevre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. A very good mixture of sleuthing and action scenes.
Interesting narrator (and protagonist).