The Poison Sky

"Shannon has mastered the most essential element of the genre, giving us a guy we want to stand shoulder to shoulder with while we try to make sense out of a senseless universe." -Booklist [Starred]

In the third installment of John Shannon's celebrated Jack Liffey series, Jack’s transition to the unexpected vocation of private investigator seems complete when a client desperately begs him to find her runaway teenage son. As it becomes clear that the boy has been ensnared in a cult, the client sets a nearly impossible condition: that her estranged husband must not be involved. The case promises to lead to chaos, but Jack is nevertheless compelled to try to get Jimmy Mardesich back, even as a group of thugs, as ludicrous as they are menacing, break into Jack’s condo and terrorize his girlfriend Marlena. 

On the heels of this attack, the private detective is forced to allow his precocious twelve-year-old daughter, Maeve, to tag along. Their search will take them from the machinations of a doomsday cult to the byzantine halls of corporate corruption and, ultimately, a potential environmental disaster of unimaginable proportions. As Otto Penzler noted when The Poison Sky was first published, “Shannon, with his hero Jack Liffey, a knight errant cruising the L.A. freeways and frequenting the less glamorous suburbs, is squarely in the lineage of Raymond Chandler

The Jack Liffey series takes readers deep into the many unexplored communities, enclaves and cultures of Los Angeles that sometimes co-exist, sometimes clash, but always surprise. Fans of Michael Connelly will fall deep into the fast-paced, unpredictable, and dangerous world John Shannon creates.