Raptor's Ridge - Florence William

A mild-mannered college professor becomes an unlikely candidate to hunt down the killer of the town’s richest man and his movie star paramour. But as things progress, it quickly becomes apparent that every attractive woman on the West Coast has become a maniac's idea of the most dangerous game. 

Called in because of a chance encounter years before, Max Blake, a former newspaper reporter-turned-professor and part-time private detective, is forced to form unusual and sometimes dodgy alliances as he investigates the vicious killings with the city’s police chief. The alliance is even more complicated because of a past history between Max and the chief, and the fact that the leading candidates for the murders are members of the city's police force. 

The trail winds through the incredible mansion called Raptor’s Ridge, through the streets and alleyways of Oregon's state capitol, and it eventually spills into the state’s beautiful but deadly High Desert near the town of John Day. 

When the killer is eventually cornered and violence explodes in unexpected ways, Max must use all of his wits and daring, plus a little bit of luck, to remain alive during a deadly night of terror ... and eventual reckoning. 

Fans of the author's Max Blake Westerns series will rejoice in discovering this new and thoroughly modern Max, the great-great grandson and namesake of the legendary federal marshal that forms the basis of five novels from the same author.