Andrew Klavan. Dynamite Road (2003) 315 pp.
Jim Bishop is a hard man, as cold as the wind off the water and tough to the point of brutality. Scott Weiss is Bishop’s boss, a world-weary ex-cop who runs a private detective agency out of a concrete tower in the heart of San Francisco. Weiss sends Bishop to investigate corruption at a Northern California airport, and so sets events in motion that will lead both men on a desperate hunt for a master assassin. A death in a mansion in Presidio Heights, a seemingly random murder South of Market, an apparent suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge—all seem to bear the mark of Weiss’ old nemesis, an expert gun-for-hire who goes by the name of the Shadowman.