Passage of the Hurricane
Description
“The most essential San Francisco novel since The Maltese Falcon."
—Marcia DeSanctis, author of A Hard Place to Leave
Three crimes. Three centuries. One truth.
In 1990, San Francisco investigator George Krishna Walker battles corrupt police, international organized crime rings, and the ghosts of his own past to solve related cases that span 350 years.
He is hired by old flame Hannah Rose to investigate the death of her father, a former district attorney killed by a cable car in what police quickly dismiss as an accident. Walker and Hannah share a complicated past, and as he begins asking questions, old feelings resurface, along with troubling evidence that the death was anything but accidental. The deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that the truth behind Harrison Rose’s death is far more dangerous than anyone imagined.
Walker’s search leads him through San Francisco neighborhoods—Chinatown, North Beach, the waterfront—where he relies on an eclectic network of allies, including a teenage forensics prodigy, a philosophizing taxi driver, Homicide Detail partners, and a waterfront psychic who shares his past in India. The investigation deepens when he and Hannah discover documents in her father’s possession connected to the Hurricane, a Gold Rush–era ship captained by her ancestor—and a priceless Inca dagger missing from her father’s house.
Those documents point to a larger mystery: an international artifact theft ring, a corrupt UC Berkeley archaeologist determined to locate the long-buried wreck of the Hurricane, and rumors of a legendary ransom of Inca gold tied to the ship’s cargo. As Walker follows the trail from San Francisco’s buried Gold Rush waterfront to the Peruvian jungle, he uncovers links to a long-dormant police corruption case—and finds himself pursued by dangerous men willing to kill to claim what they want.
More details
Person
James Lawrence is a pseudonym for the writing team of James O’Reilly and Larry Habegger, who have worked together on literary projects since the 1980s. An earlier version of Passage of the Hurricane appeared in the San Francisco Examiner as a daily serial in 1982, followed over the next few years by three reader-participation mysteries. James and Larry have also written dozens of stories for magazines and newspapers and co-authored a syndicated newspaper column that appeared in five countries over thirty-two years.
In 1993 they launched the award-winning Travelers’ Tales publishing company, which has published more than 170 books of travel literature, memoir, and the occasional work of fiction. James and Larry have worked together on all of these books.
James was born in Oxford, England, grew up in San Francisco, and now lives with his wife Wenda on the banks of the Icicle River in Central Washington. Larry lives with his wife Paula Mc Cabe on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, where he looks down at the waterfront and ponders the mysteries concealed beneath the piers.Content
Part One
Gold Mountain
Part Two
Child of the Sun
Part Three
City of Saint Francis