Light Before Day

A 20-something magazine reporter becomes embroiled in a Hollywood murder mystery in this richly developed thriller. It's a blessing in disguise when Adam Murphy is fired from racy fluff rag Glitz, since he'd been chasing a real story involving a closeted Marine helicopter pilot, Daniel Brady, whose association with a pedophilic pimp produced a sordid videotape that led to Daniel's suicide plane crash. Adam soon becomes the assistant to sharp, sarcastic straight mystery novelist James Wilton, who instructs Adam to continue researching Daniel Brady. But Adam's still reeling from the demise of a heated, three-week affair with hunky but secretive Corey, who'd outgrown Adam's blackout-inducing drunkenness. And when Corey disappears, Adam discovers that three other gay men have inexplicably vanished over the past few years, supposed victims of the West Hollywood Slasher. Armed with a dossier from a trustworthy Hollywood reporter, Adam sets out to solve a crime and becomes embroiled in blackmail, murder, a child porn ring and a subplot involving a "rogue assassin" who blows up methamphetamine labs. Also check out Christopher Rice's other best-selling thrillers.

Paperback, 544 pages, orig. published 2005, this edition 2007