2008, UK, Century, pub date 14 January 2008, hardback
2008, USA, Little Brown, pub date 5 February 2008, hardback
Michael Campion, the teenage son of California's ex-governor, has mysteriously vanished. Knowned as the "Boy with a Broken Heart" because of his incurable heart defect, Michael grew up in the eye of an adoring public. The pressure on Detective Lindsay Boxer to find Michael is overwhelming. When she finally gets a lead, it is devastating. While working on the Campion case, Lindsay and Rich Conklin also investigates the terrifying fires that are destroying some of the most beautiful homes in San Francisco-and killing their owners in the flames. But when Lindsay Boxer invites her friends in the Women's Murder Club to help her uncover the arsonist, the blazes suddenly gets too close to home. Now as these two intense, demanding cases bring Lindsay and Rich closer, Lindsay will find herself on the brink of an emotional meltdown.
Plot
Lindsay is confronted - as frequently happens in these series - by 2 cases. We meet 2 thugs called Pidge and Hawk whose idea of fun is burning people alive. They kill three couples until they try the big one in the house of a senator, Campion, whose son has recently disappeared. Campion reacts, though, and kills Hawk. Pidge flees but after some search led by Boxer and her team, they find a lead in the college they attended together with the kids of the victims; they were some sort of geniuses who wanted to try the perfect murder without being caught and for no reason, being inspired by similar gory stories collected in a novel, *The 7th Heaven*, full of latin quotations they actually left behind them in the murder scenes. After a final confrontation at his house, Pidge, too, is captured and incarcerated. The parallel story concerns the same Michael Campion, son of a famous politician, who was reported missing but now he's been said to have visited a prostitute - Junie Moon - right before his disappearance. Junie Moon is interviewed by the Police and confesses Campion died in her arms and then, caught by panic, she had called her boyfriend and decided to slaughter him and throw him away in plastic bags. Junie is taken to court and tried but found not guilty. In the meantime, a creepy wannabe writer, Twilly, stalks Yuki Castellano, who had represented the People in the trial and tells her he knows who killed Campion and tries to kill Yuki, too; he's caught in the act, though, and he reveals he knew Campion left Junie Moon alive and he had asked her to make up the whole story in order to write a book. The reader is left with no answer until the very end, where we discover Junie Moon had contrived the whole thing; Michael's alive, he had actually been at Junie's that night as so many more as they were lovers and now, with everybody believing he's dead, they reunite and fly towards a new life together!
