Julie Smith. True-Life Adventure (1985) 249 pp.
Paul McDonald, a former newspaperman and struggling novelist, worked part-time for Jack Birnbaum, rewriting the San Francisco private investigator’s reports into legibility. When Jack drops dead in Paul’s living room, and then someone breaks into his home and later torches it, Paul determines that this current crime spree is somehow connected to one of Jack Birnbaum’s cases. Paul’s investigation leads him to the laboratory of a Nobel laureate geneticist and then to City Hall.
Setting: San Francisco
Hubin