Meet Me at the Morgue - Ross Macdonald

nSomebody in Pacific Point is guilty of a kidnapping, but what probation officer Howard Cross wants to find most is innocence: in an ex-war hero who has taken a tough manslaughter rap, in a wealthy woman with a heart full of secrets, and in a blue-eyed beauty who has lost her way. The trouble is that the abduction has already turned to murder, and the more Cross pries into the case the further he slips into a pool of violence and evil. Somewhere in the California desert the whole scheme may come down on the wrong man.

Somewhere Cross is going to find the last piece of a bloody puzzle--a mystery of blackmail, passion, and hidden identities that might be better left unsolved.