Bones of the Barbary Coast

Bones of the Barbary Coast is one of those rare books that is both a thrill ride and a cerebral study of relationships. A subtle, mature, and enticing novel from one the most exciting novelists around.
-- Laurie R. King, best-selling author of The Art of Detection, Locked Rooms, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, etc.

A century after San Francisco’s Great Quake of 1906, one of the disaster’s strangest victims has only just come to light.

When Cree Black gets a call from SFPD homicide inspector Bert Marchetti, about a skeleton recently unearthed in the foundation of a fine Victorian home, she can’t resist going to San Francisco to help investigate. The bones have been sent to UC Berkeley for analysis, where they’ve intrigued and puzzled forensic anthropologists.

At the lab, they’ve nicknamed the skeleton Wolfman.

Not quite human, not quite animal, the bones awaken troubling questions. Who was the wolfman? What caused his deformities, and how did he end up in that grand hilltop home? Cree’s historical research takes her back to the unholy glory days of the Barbary Coast, San Francisco’s infamous red-light district. Her story is illuminated by entries from the 1889 diary of Lydia Schweitzer, a Victorian woman with her own compelling interest in the person who would come to be known as the wolfman. As Lydia and Cree pursue the wolfman, in separate eras but with equal courage and compassion, both are brought face to face with human nature’s darkest elements.

The third entry in the acclaimed Cree Black series is a thrilling portrait of a city’s hidden face – and a probing look at the ambiguous borders between science, faith, and superstition.