St. Martin's Paperbacks, 3/2010
From the perennial New York Times bestseller comes a
powerful new novel in which Detective Shane Scully, who grew up as an
orphan, must revisit his painful childhood to find out who murdered the
kind and charismatic man who became a father to him
Abandoned
by his parents as an infant, Scully was reared in an orphanage,
Huntington House. The only positive thing in his young life was the
attention of the Home’s director, Walter “Pop” Dix. Pop, an avid
surfer, would take a small group of kids for early morning surfing. He
was the father none of them had ever had. That was thirty years
ago. Now, Shane is forced to revisit these memories when Pop is found
dead, the victim of an apparently self-inflicted shotgun blast. He
leaves a message asking six specific people, all of whom attended
Huntington House, to be his pallbearers, and Shane is one of the
chosen. He and his fellow pallbearers don’t believe it was a suicide.
That leaves murder. But why, and by whom? Together, the
pallbearers embark on a dangerous odyssey in pursuit of justice for
Pop, and for retribution against those responsible for his death. Their
journey takes them up against an unforeseen adversary whose power and
influence far exceed anything they could have imagined.