John Denson, the soft-boiled sleuth,
wades into the murky waters of big-city politics,
newspaper corruption, and corporate intrigue. 

When John Denson is hired by the publishers of a faltering newspaper to uncover the "Harry" (a reporter using inside information for extortion) on its staff, he discovers that blackmail is only a small part of a labyrinthine scheme of international corruption and brutal murder. The idealistic private eye is at his toughest, lustiest, and shrewdest as he attempts to find his way through a bewildering, fetid maze that stretches from Seattle to Japan and back. 

Shakedown artists large and small, cops on the take, sex- shop entrepreneurs, and sticky-fingered politicos are just a few of the oddball characters that Denson must sift through before he can write "30" (the end) to the Harry and the killer. 

"His writing...is as good as it was on Decoys. This is a grand job."
—The New York Times Book Review 

"Hoyt's Seattle locale is relatively fresh,
his style engagingly low-key, and in John Denson
he has created one of the more likable detectives in current fiction."
—San Diego Union