The Big Hello and the Long Goodbye

Walker, a transplanted New Yorker now eking out a living as a private eye in San Francisco, has a million-dollar view of the Bay with a rent-controlled apartment attached, a new girlfriend with an attitude, a supposedly lovelorn Indonesian fighting fish (a present from Linda, the girlfriend), and two cases he is coming to care too much about. Fifteen-year-old Ali Bakkrat shot and killed his Palestinian-American sister, Noor, after she refused to quit seeing her Hispanic boyfriend. Walker is hired to turn up anything that will help the boy's lawyer mount a defense in this seemingly hopeless case. In the same week, electronics entrepreneur David Singleton hires Walker to find his brother, Allan, a mentally unstable mathematical genius who has gone missing. A loner and outsider, Walker is increasingly drawn to both his clients. As the cases unfold and begin to intertwine, he finds himself pushing the ethical limits of his profession in order to shake loose the truth. Walker's journey takes him from the world of his Nob Hill client, David Singleton, to skid row hotel rooms and the grimy Hall of Justice