جوایز و چیزهای مرده

A RANDOM SERIES OF MURDERS IS ONLY a succession of headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle for investigator Sharon McCone until one of her legal co-op's clients becomes a victim. Perry Hilderly had been a founder of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the early 1960s. Although he had settled down and drawn up a proper will several years earlier, a holograph document was found among his possessions ... the new will disinherits his children and leaves his considerable estate to four unknowns. As Sharon tries to track down this strange quartet, she wonders what connection they had had with the dead man. One is a popular news anchor, one is a successful divorce attorney, one runs a Marin County horse stable, and the fourth is an alcoholic oysterman. Before long, Sharon notices a pattern--a tangled pattern of involvement leading back to the Vietnam War. When the random killer starts to strike closer to home, the facts behind Hilderly's death become less abstract. Never before has Sharon become so personally involved in a case--and faced so squarely the brutal consequences of murderous rage. When a former sixties radical is murdered during a string of random sniper attacks, the All Souls Legal Cooperative must settle his surprisingly large estate. P.I. Sharon McCone comes across a new will, made just days before he died, that disinherits his two children in favor of four unknown and unconnected parties. McCone sifts through Perry Hilderly's belongings, but finds little to explain this puzzling change -- until she uncovers a .357 with the serial number burned off. As McCone tracks down the new beneficiaries she discovers that the shootings aren't so random after all and that the dead man isn't the only one with a lurid past. To find the killer, she must follow a treacherous trail of evidence that travels from the Vietnam years to the present. But along the way the elusive sniper waits in a homicidal rage and takes aim -- this time at All Souls and Sharon McCone. A random series of murders is only a succession of headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle for investigator Sharon McCone until one of her legal co-op's clients, Perry Hilderly, becomes a victim. McCone discovers that the dead man had disinherited his children and left his estate to four strangers, all with ties to a distant crime. As Sharon tries to track down this strange quartet she notices a pattern - a tangled pattern of involvement leading back to the Vietnam War. And when the random killer starts to strike closer to home, Sharon is personally confronted with the brutal consequences of murderous rage