Amazon.com (ISBN 0425163008, Hardcover)

In Richard Barre's The Ghosts of Morning, a homicide that exploded the glorious sun, surf, and beach-party youth of two teenage surfers in still-golden Southern California reemerges to haunt the lives of the survivors.

Wil Hardesty, Vietnam vet, ex-surfer and ex-husband (introduced in Barre's Shamus-winning The Innocents) is sucked into the intrigues of a wealthy and powerful family, the Van Zants. Denny Van Zant, Wil's mentor and friend in the Southern California surfing fraternity, enlisted in the Vietnam-era Marines to escape allegations of a homicide cover-up and died in the bloody assault on Hue. Now, however, his mother has received an anonymous letter. Denny is alive, and for a large sum of money, he can be found. She needs an investigator. Hardesty, pulled into the investigation by gratitude for past kindnesses, finds himself ensnared and finally endangered by the opposing claims of loyalty, love, and, finally, the truth.

Barre's well-crafted narrative propels a believably human Hardesty into the worlds of news reporting, police investigations, body builders, dingy seaside motels, and a haunted post-Vietnam bivvy for burnouts outside Hilo, Hawaii. Amid escalating violence, each puzzle Hardesty solves raises new questions. He moves inexorably toward a final confrontation in the penthouse of an L.A. office tower, looking down on the glittering lights and dark shadows of his city and his past. --Barbara Schlieper