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Clay Blackburn has two jobs. Most of the time he's a book scout in Berkeley. Some of the time he's...not quite a private detective. He doesn't have a license, he doesn't have a gun, he doesn't have a business card - but people come to him for help and in helping them he comes across more than his fair share of trouble.

And all the time he's a poet. When fellow poet and old flame Peggy Denby asks him to help clear up some details about her husband's death, details that include lots of missing money and rare Etruscan artifacts, he's willing to oblige her. After she's murdered, he keeps looking - and comes across a good-looking banker, Peggy's hostile stepson, her strangely attractive stepdaughter, and more than a few Berkeley crazies.

Review: "Hill captures the taste and texture of the yeasty street and bed life of his native turf with an eye that manages to be fresh and appropriately amoral."
-The Chicago Tribune

"Owen Hill's breathless, sly and insouciant mystery novel is full of that rare Dawn Powell-ish essence: fictional gossip. I could imagine popping in and out of his sexy little Chandler building apartment a thousand times and never having the same cocktail buzz twice. Poets have all the fun, apparently."
-Jonathan Letham, author of Motherless Brooklyn

"Loyal admirers of Clay Blackburn, the polished genius of the Chandler Building who condescends to serve as a helpful purveyor of literature, will welcome this latest account of that paragon among gentlemen's gentlemen, in which he at last tells all."
-Tom Clark, author of Edward Dorn: A World of Difference

Bio: OWEN HILL is the author of six books of poetry and a collection of stories, Loose Ends (Thumbscrew Press, San Francisco). He lives in Berkeley, California.