A Max Mingus Thriller

THE JOB; find a rich man's kidnapped son in Haiti. THE REWARD: $10 million to bring the boy back alive. THE MAN: Max Mingus, ex cop, ex-PI and now ex-con. THE STAKES: his predecessors haven't just failed, they're been destroyed...Max Mingus knows the price of a bad risk, but he takes the Haiti job because no one else will. A lawless of voodoo and black magic where each man must face his personal demons, Haiti is also home to a monster they call Mr Clarinet - infamous for spiriting countless children away from their families. In searching for the boy - alive or dead - Max has only his life to lose. But in Haiti, there are fates far worse than death...

Miami, 1981. When Detective Max Mingus and his partner Joe are called to the scene of a death at Miami's Primate Park, it looks like another routine — if slightly bizarre — investigation. Until two things turn up: the victim's family, slaughtered; and a partly digested tarot card in the dead man's stomach. The King of Swords.

An increasingly bloody trail leads Max and Joe first to a sinister fortune-teller and her scheming pimp son, then to the infamous Solomon Boukman. Few have ever met the most feared criminal in Miami, but rumours abound of a forked tongue, voodoo ceremonies and friends in very high places.

Against a backdrop of black magic and police corruption, Max and Joe must distinguish the good guys from the bad - and track down some answers. What is the significance of the King of Swords? What makes those who have swallowed the card go on a killing spree just before they die? And can Max find out the truth about Solomon Boukman, before death's shadow reaches his own front door...?