Frank Marr

He's a good detective...with a bad habit. Frank Marr knows crime in Washington, DC. A decorated former police detective, he retired early and now ekes a living as a private eye for a defense attorney. Frank Marr may be the best investigator the city has ever known, but the city doesn't know his dirty secret. A long-functioning drug addict, Frank has devoted his considerable skills to hiding his usage from others. But after accidentally discovering a kidnapped teenage girl in the home of an Adams Morgan drug gang, Frank becomes a hero and is thrust into the spotlight. He reluctantly agrees to investigate the disappearance of another girl--possibly connected to the first--and the heightened scrutiny may bring his own secrets to light, too. Frank is as slippery and charming an antihero as you've ever met, but he's also achingly vulnerable. The result is a mystery of startling intensity, a tightly coiled thriller where every scene may turn disastrous. THE SECOND GIRL is the crime novel of the season, and the start of a refreshing new series from an author who knows the criminal underworld inside and out.

Frank Marr was a good cop with a bad habit, until his burgeoning addictions to alcohol and cocaine forced him into retirement from the DC police. Now barely eking out a living as a private investigator, he agrees to take on a family case: a favor for his aunt, who was like a second mother to him growing up. Frank's surveillance confirms that his cousin Jeffrey is involved with a small-time drugs operation. Modest stuff, until Frank's own home is burglarized, leaving a body on the kitchen floor: Jeffrey. Worse, Frank's.38 revolver, the murder weapon, is stolen, along with his cherished music collection, his only possessions of sentimental value: dozens of vinyl albums that belonged to his late mother. Only Frank's stash, his dwindling supply of the cocaine he needs to get through the day, is untouched. Why? Clearly, his cousin was deeper in the underworld than anyone realized. With the weight of his family, his reputation, and his own life on the line, he'll have to find the culprit by following the stolen goods through a tangled network of petty thieves, desperate addicts, deceiving fences, good cops, bad cops, and one morally compromised taxi driver. Frank's as determined to uncover the truth as he is to feed his habit, and both pursuits could prove deadly. This time, it may just be a question of what gets him first.

Forced to retire from the D. C. police, newly minted P.I. Frank Marr is recovering from rock bottom when a friend asks for help, and now, he must revisit the dark, drug-fueled world he left behind. Ostracized by his family after a botched case that led to the death of his baby cousin, Jeffrey, Frank was on a collision course with catastrophe. Now clean and clinging hard to sobriety, he's barely eking out a living as a private investigator for a defense attorney, who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. Frank passes the time, and tests himself, by robbing the houses of local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. But when an old friend from his police days needs Frank's help to prove he didn't shoot an unarmed civilian, Frank is drawn back into the world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts, running in the same circles that enabled his addiction those years ago. Never one to play by the rules, Frank recruits a young man he nearly executed years before. Together, a good man trying not to go bad and a bad man trying to do good-detective and criminal charge headfirst into the D.C. drug wars. Neither may make it out.