The monkey's mask

Plot

Private investigator Jill Fitzpatrick didn't know that the poetry scene could be as sticky as sex, or that words could open up your legs one minute and open up your grave the next. Mickey didn't know it either -Mickey who loved poetry and read it every day. Sweet girl, just nineteen, the life strangled out of her. Put on the case by Mickey's suburbanite parents, Jill's up to her ears in sleazy poets, corruption and deceit. And seduction - lovely, intoxicating seduction - dished up by Mickey's former poetry professor, Diana Maitland. Like hot wine, Diana fills Jill's head, her throat, her lungs; heavy glassfuls soaking her mind. Deep digging into the tightly knit verse community turns up some dangerous truth, truth that just isn't beauty. Jill's closer than she knows, but killers don't like to be caught, and poets' pens can bleed more than just ink.