The Venus Deal: A California Century Mystery Paperback - 2007

First line

TEN DAYS AGO, BEFORE CYNTHIA MOON HAD RUN OFF ON HER mysterious errand, Clyde McGraw's orchestra blew like crusading angels.

From the rear cover

Set a few months before the events in Kuhlken's previous novel, The Loud Adios, this book finds Tom Hickey still a civilian, still, if somewhat precariously, married, and part owner of a nightclub in wartime San Diego. The war is World War II, and Hickey is making money, due to the phenomenal appeal of the club's very young female singer, Cynthia Moon. Hickey's partner, Paul Castillo, has his mysterious sources for such rare wartime luxuries as creamery butter and Maine lobster, but it is Cynthia who draws the crowds. Except now Cynthia Moon has disappeared. Business drops precipitously and sometime private detective Hickey sets off on a search for her. She is elusive, but Hickey encounters her bizarre and tragic family. Her father, a pathetic adventurer destroyed by his wife, is dying in a nursing home. Venus, Cynthia's mother, has joined an ostensible Indian guru, Master Pravinshandra, to lead an ominous cult whose benign surface covers suspicion of rape and murder. While Hickey finds, loses, and once more finds Cynthia, his own life is falling apart. His partner is probably cheating him, his wife is slipping away from him, his beloved teenage daughter is being pulled along with her. Kuhlken magically evokes the times, the half-mad atmosphere of Venus's cult, and the hard reality of a business where it's not possible to stay clear of the mob. And over all is The War - the war that is transforming all their lives.