A Cold Mind is set in Houston in the early 1980s when the city was known as the homicide capital of the nation. It was a period of boom years for the city's exploding growth and the head-spinning homicide rate was a reflection of those chaotic years.
This is the first novel in a quintet of books featuring Stuart Haydon, a homicide detective like no other. Independently wealthy, and faithfully married to an architect he adores, he spends more time alone in his library than in after-hour bars with his fellow detectives. His best friend is his old, wine-slurping collie. Haydon's attraction to his work as a homicide detective is psychological, and it isn't easy to explain. Which is part of the reason why he won't walk away from it.
The novel begins when three of the most beautiful calls girls who circulate in Houston's exclusive haute monde die in bizarre, violent, but seemingly unrelated incidents, Haydon suspects they are separate pieces of the same deadly puzzle. Medical reports on the women indicate the presence of a bizarre, inexplicable element in their bodies, and Haydon launches an investigation that carries him from the shadowy wharves and warehouses of the city's back streets to the exotic world of Hoston's wealthy Brazilian expatriate community—a closed society of extravagant living and well-guarded secrets.
