THE BLOCKBUSTER THRILLER THAT BECAME THE HIT TV SERIES THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO It’s the turbulent 1970s, a time of social upheaval. The generation gap has never seemed so wide and perilous, especially for veteran Santa Monica homicide detective Al Krug and his new partner, university-educated ex-surfer Casey Kellog, the youngest detective on the force. A woman’s corpse is found floating in the bay with a law firm’s business card, sealed in plastic, strung around her neck. Krug and Kellog have to solve the bizarre and gruesome murder… if they don’t kill each other first. “An expert thriller,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Weston writes smoothly and uses a good deal of sharp dialogue,” New York Times “Hard-hitting and eminently readable,” San Francisco Chronicle Carolyn Weston grew up in Hollywood during the Depression. She played hooky from school in movie theaters and libraries, honing the craft that would make her books so remarkable. During World War II, she worked in an aircraft plant and then did odd jobs around the country before writing Poor Poor Ophelia, the first Al Krug / Casey Kellog police procedural... which became the hit TV series The Streets of San Francisco. Two more books in the series, every bit as good as Ed McBain's 87th Precinct and just as memorable, followed and all three are proudly being published by Brash Books. Poor, Poor, Ophelia A Krug & Kellog Thriller By Carolyn Weston Brash Books, LLC Copyright © 2015 Brash Books LLC All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-941298-49-7 CHAPTER 1 "Why you can't eat a decent breakfast like other men," his mother's voice floated plangent and unceasing as a millrace from the kitchen. Casey glanced at his watch. Five minutes to spare, he was cutting it pretty thin. But then, he always did. Gulping down the last of his coffee, he jumped up, knocking the table, setting the centerpiece of half-blown roses and drying maidenhair fern to trembling. Four petals dropped silently onto the gleaming waxy table top. His own blurry reflection stared up at him briefly — a ghost submerged in a dark brown pond. Casey rammed his arms into the sleeves of his new hacking-type Edwardian sports coat, hunching his shoulders to settle it. He surveyed himself in the mirror over the sideboard — medium-sized, medium good-looking, brown sunbleached hair, hazel eyes, lifelong tan, a few muscles still left from his surfing days — and thought, Not bad. But maybe Edwardian was too way-out for work? Side vents and back pleats hadn't arrived yet in the Detective Division of the Santa Monica City Police Department. Well, starting this morning, a new sartorial style will be set. And by none other than your well-dressed junior-grade detective-about-town, Casey Thornton Kellog. "— And don't forget to gargle before you leave," his mother was saying. "Fog's coming in, I can smell it." Breezing into the kitchen, he kissed her sunburned cheek. "See you when I see you." "Good Lord" — she gaped at him — "if you don't look like one of those Canyon pansies. Honestly, Case, if you can't look serious, how can you expect anyone to take you seriously?" Swallowing an argument, he grinned at her. Styles in seriousness had changed like everything else, but he'd never convince her, he knew that. Just as he'd never convince his father that police work wasn't the worst possible choice of livelihood for a university-educated man. They had the old values, both of them — a compound of decency, snobbery, and that sort of oldfashioned ambition which demands that life should proceed vertically, every son exceeding his father. "Edwardian," she was saying. "As if a nice Ivy League jacket —" She was still talking as he waved good-bye and slammed out the back door, jogging down the driveway to the garage, where his Mustang sheltered from the damp sea breeze off the Pacific. "Gargle!" she shrieked as he shot by the kitchen window in reverse. "Call if you're going to be —" then, blessedly, the sound track faded out. Ah, Mama, Mama, you're too much, he thought, grinning as he turned and gunned toward the light at the end of their street — zero to forty in five seconds flat. According to an old weather tradition in Santa Monica, California, the coastal fog begins at Fourteenth Street. But this morning the veil of gray had crept inland as far as Seventeenth, dimming then blotting out the morning sun as he drove westward, hanging like theatrical scrim over the new high-rises along Ocean Avenue. The foghorn at the end of Santa Monica Pier gave periodic howls — like something dying, Casey thought, far out at sea. Of the Pacific, he could see nothing. But picturing eight thousand miles of open ocean to the coast of China, he felt a gypsy stir, a moment's dissatisfaction with the crystallizing pattern of his life. Then the traffic light changed. Casey gunned the Mustang, and a minute later swung into the asphalt-surrounded snowwhite civic complex which included the City Hall, the Police Department