Disgraced former cop Clarke Lantham doesn't mind making his living as a PI. He doesn't mind the long hours, living in his office, or even dealing with bill collectors, because it keeps him in the city--as close to heaven as he's ever likely to get.
Fortunately, the world needs private detectives. Unfortunately for Lantham, on this particular Saturday morning, "the world" consists of a fretful mother with a missing daughter, and the place he has to go look for her has a name every bit as ominous as Suburbia.
With only a teenager's blog and diaries to go on, and time running out, Lantham chases puzzle pieces from the posh shadow of Mount Diablo to the kink clubs of San Francisco to the genetic engineering labs of Stanford. Tailed by mercenaries, framed for murder, and forced into hiding, he somehow must keep his head in the face of a world where the normal rules of reality don't seem to apply--all for the sake of a nineteen-year-old girl whose face he sees every time he closes his eyes.
