Someone is filling the desert caves around Phoenix with bodies—a madman who, in a taunting ritual, is leaving behind a record of his crimes etched into the stone. With no leads and no suspects, Detective Alex Mills sees a case spinning out of control. City leaders want the case solved yesterday, and another detective wants to elbow Mills out of the way. As the body count rises, Mills turns to Gus Parker, an "intuitive medium" whose murky visions sometimes point to real clues. It's an unorthodox approach, but Mills is desperate. When Parker is brought to the crime scenes, he sees visions of a house on fire and a screaming child. But what does it mean? He struggles to interpret his psychic messages, knowing that the killer is one step ahead and that in this vast desert, the next murder could happen anywhere. Nor does it help that he's always been unlucky in love and now finds himself the prey of a lovelorn stalker. She is throwing him off his game. Someone will win this contest, and both Parker and Mills fear it will be the cunning, ruthless killer, who is able to use the trackless landscape as a cover for his brutal crimes.

Detective Alex Mills turns to psychic Gus Parker to help him solve a series of baffling murders perpetrated by a deranged killer who leaves his victims' bodies and taunting clues in the cemeteries of Phoenix, AZ. A killer is on the loose, leaving fresh bodies among the dead in Phoenix cemeteries, and marking the murders with ghoulish signs that warn of more evil to come. It's a crude camouflage that has Detective Alex Mills stumped. As he has done before, Mills turns to his buddy, the reluctant psychic Gus Parker. His visions, as cryptic and baffling as they sometimes are, mean something. But just as the investigation heats up, and Mills needs him most, Gus Parker receives ominous threats from a mysterious source. Is this a crazed fan who is trying to get to Gus' love interest, rock-and-roll legend Billie Welch? Or are these threats related to the spree of cemetery killings? There are nefarious secrets hiding in the shadows of the valley's most well-heeled neighborhoods, and some of the most prominent residents have the most to fear.

A cop. A psychic. And a dead socialite. Who killed Viveca Canning and where is the Dali masterpiece that hung on the walls of her estate? So many people had a motive. Phoenix Detective Alex Mills is on the case with the help of his sometimes-psychic buddy Gus Parker. You won’t find another duo like them. And once you hop on the wild ride, you won’t want to get off. Who will survive a doomed flight over the Pacific? Who tried to blow up an art gallery? Who saw Viveca Canning as a threat and shot her twice in the head? Those questions hound Gus and Alex as the case unravels. It’s an art caper wrapped in a murder mystery. The Valley of the Sun becomes a Valley of Shadows, where everyone has something to hide and the truth lies beneath Phoenix in a labyrinth of tunnels and dungeons. There’s a lot at stake for Gus and Alex. With the case swirling all around them, the future of Gus and his rock n’ roll girlfriend hangs in the balance. For Alex, it’s a test of family loyalties as a health scare for his wife brings him to the breaking point. Cooper’s style is, at once, scorching and wry. He deftly and seamlessly mixes thrills and chills with snark and wit. There’s good and evil, love and despair, compassion, deceit, and danger. The action swerves around twists and turns and collides with a cast of characters you will not soon forget.