Sin City — Max Allan Collins

Meet the little known and even less understood heroes of police work in Las Vegas--the forensic investigators. Led by veteran Gil Grissom, the remarkable team assigned to the Criminalistics Bureau's graveyard shift--including Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown, Nick Stokes, and Sara Sidle--must combine cutting-edge scientific methods and old-fashioned savvy as they work to untangle the evidence behind the yellow police tape.

"If anything happens to me, get this cassette to the police," Lynn Pierce told her friends the night she disappeared without a trace. Pierce seemed to be a devout Christian, devoted wife and mother--but she left behind a recording of her husband threatening to cut her into little pieces.

Jenna Patrick was a professional stripper who said she was trying to get out of the sex trade and into junior college. She wound up strangled to death in a locked room in the back of the club where she worked. What could these two women possibly have had in common--aside from the fact that they are both victims of homicide? Find out as Grissom, Willows, and the rest of the CSI team track down a sordid trail of secret lives and private dances, from the saintly to the seedier side of Sin City.