Books by John Wessel

When his girlfriend Alison's former lover turns up dead in a small Illinois town, Harding, a tough, street-wise ex-con, is drawn into the bizarre circle of Grand Terrace, a University of Chicago dorm populated by an eccentric cast of misfits, artists, and writers, as he digs into the past to uncover dangerous, old secrets.

It's a Sunday in late July and Harding, private investigator, is riding down a rain-slick road with Cassie Rayn, a one-time porn star, headed for the house where she grew up. Harding's a man of many talents, or at least many jobs - cabbie, tour guide, private detective. The truth is that Harding has to take whatever job comes along. Since a manslaughter conviction cost him his license and his legitimate clients, the detective work that's been coming his way has ranged from the barely legal to the slightly impossible. Cassie started telling him the story of a runaway boy's disappearance twenty-two years ago. And how two years later, the boy's sister hid in a basement while upstairs the rest of her family were murdered. The boy was never found. The crime was never solved. Cassie Rayn is that sister, and now she's begun to receive terrifying anonymous messages, strange reminders of the most horrible night of her life and stranger hints that her brother might be alive. When Harding takes the case, the only things he knows for certain are that their search has stirred up something ugly and if he can't get to the bottom of this soon, his client's life will be snuffed out.

No boundaries. No limits. No turning back.His boots are frozen. His hands are covered with sin: the blood and sweat of a trashed motel room where a wealthy Chicago doctor has been on a binge of sex, sadism, and drugs. Harding is just doing his job, an unlicensed PI running surveillance on a cheating husband. At stake is a womans divorce settlement, two million dollars in a Swiss bank account, and some harrowing videotape. But for Harding, a simple domestic case is about to explode into the Chicago night.Suddenly, the investigation into Elenya Rosenbergs depraved doctor husband is leading Harding to places he can't afford to go-and to a bizarre killer with a taste for body-piercing and ancient Greek philosophy. And as Harding gets closer to the sordid truth about the Rosenbergs, he collides with a violent chapter of his own past-when Harding made a choice, a bad man went free, and a good man went too far, but also not far enough. . .