In his Shamus Award-winning first novel, The Innocents, Richard Barre introduced audiences to Wil Hardesty, "a person trying hard to survive a few of life's dirtier tricks" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). He's a private eye with a deep, dark past — and an uncertain future. In The Ghosts of Morning, Barre plunges even further into Wil's history, to a far-off place where murder and friendship collide. Denny Van Zant was Wil Hardesty's best friend. Together they surfed, drank and brawled their youth away. Then came the day Denny was accused of murder. Some said he did it. Some said he didn't. He was never quite charged. Then came Vietnam, and years later Wil saw what had been identified as his best friend buried at a military funeral. Now, decades later, Wil receives a phone call from Denny's mother, a voice from yesterday that brings painful memories flooding back. She thinks Denny is still alive. Her evidence is sketchy, but it is a place to start. And once...

The California Coast: Off San Miguel Island a fishing boat struggles in the battering-ram seas and blinding rain of a sudden squall... On the beach near his home, private investigator Wil Hardesty is approached by a Vietnamese fisherman. Vinh Tien is not convinced the disappearance at sea of his only son was the accident it was ruled. His son had fallen in with evil personified: a man who came to America the same time Vinh did, a Vietnamese boat person like himself... For once at peace with his dead, Wil resists digging up the ghosts of those he fought and bled with in-country. But he is moved by Vinh Tien's hardship and loss. For Wil, too, has lost a son to the ocean... What Wil discovers brings him into a shadowy world of Asian gangs—dragons that prey upon their own—contraband of the most insidious sort, corruption that reaches unexpected heights...played out against a background as exotic as the Vietnamese culture, as violent as the code of...

Winner of the 1996 Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel!There are seven of them. Children — innocents — whose long-buried remains are uncovered by a flash-flood. No one knows who could have committed such a crime. Clues are scarce, and with the media turning the story into a law enforcement nightmare, time is short. Only Wil Hardesty, a private eye who has more in common with the case than anyone knows, is willing to push hard enough — and dig deep enough — to find the cruelest of killers. The killer of The Innocents ...