A thirty-something junk-food maven and brash, brainy Berkeley cop, Jill Smith usually doesn't spend much time contemplating her navel. But she accepted an invitation to see the new guru in town. She was as shocked as the rest of the packed house when the young man's spirit rose to heaven before their very eyes . . . with a little earthly aid from the dagger buried deep in his swirling red robes. His followers say it was hi karma to die. Now Jill Smith's seeking enlightenment—looking deep into prime causes such as love, hate, ambition, and dark dreams. Among a host of devoted disciples, rough real-estate dealers, rival soul savers, and beautiful consorts, she's searching for the answer to a cop's prayers: the person whose karma is to kill.

A call from an ex-husband is never welcome. For Berkeley cop Jill Smith it wins a Nobel Prize for chutzpah. Her ex wants a favor. His "friend" and co-worker, Anne Spaulding, is missing. Anne's ransacked apartment—complete with blood-sprayed walls—gives Jill the chilling feeling that her ex may be up to his arrogant neck in murder. Now Jill's out with the street people of Berkeley and the crazies of People's Park to uncover the fate of a welfare worker. But her best suspect is her the former "significant other" who still pushes her buttons—the ones that can set her temperature on boil, break her heart, or ruin her life.

Telegraph Avenue ain't what it used to be now that gentrification has gotten under way. But Jill Smith, the junk food-loving, smart and savvy Berkeley cop, hasn't changed. Chugging along in her vintage VW to fetch a pint of chocolate chocolate shower ice cream, she runs smack into a case of murder. A local philanthropist's Cadillac has crashed going down the steepest hill in town. Its lifeless owner lies faceup in the rain, and cuts in the brake lines prove this is no accident. Jill's best suspects are young, ambitious and definitely upwardly mobile. But her best bet for a motive is one of the great class a hunger for love, a love of money, and, lust for vengeance.

Berkeley detective Jill Smith investigates the murder of handicapped Liz Goldenstern at the construction site of a building designed for the disabled

Jill investigates the death of a chef who was mysteriously poisoned by his own soup Until the helicopter crash, Jill Smith never knew fear. A homicide detective in the leftist enclave of Berkeley, California, she has faced down her share of thugs, thieves, and killers, but since surviving the downed helicopter, her nerves have been shot. Unwilling to submit to her anxiety, she goes back to work. The chef and owner of Paradise, an upscale restaurant in Berkeley’s so-called “Gourmet Ghetto,” is found on the floor of his own kitchen, poisoned by the soup he was seasoning. On his way to the top of the foodie pyramid, the chef made enemies of his dishwasher, his neighbors, and Earth Man, a hippie holdout who lives on kitchen scraps. To pinpoint the killer, Jill will have to remember what it means to be fearless. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Berkeley policewoman Jill Smith investigates a series of bizarre events involving a dentist attacked by a eucalyptus tree, a female mountain climber, and murder

Until someone put a poisoned needle in his bicycle seat, Phil Drem was the meanest, most nit-picking IRS agent in Berkeley, California. But when Detective Jill Smith began searching Berkeley's backwaters for the tax man's killer, she found a different picture of a caring Drem, whose once-beautiful wife was "allergic to the world" and whose friends and enemies, old hippies and would-be entrepreneurs, enjoyed a ghoulish pastime called The Death Game. Did the Death Game KO Drem? Was someone's schedule a motive for murder? And what about a CPA who drove a red Lotus ruthlessly and guaranteed his clients they'd never be audited? Only one thing is for sure—somewhere in Berkeley's colorful backwaters, a killer is still on the loose. And for a detective who loves her city, doubts her lover, and has a knack for solving the toughest of crimes, finding the truth is about as inevitable as... Death And Taxes .

It was part street theater, part civil disobedience, and pure Someone was waging guerrilla warfare on the city's meter maids and their beloved parking meters. But when the prankster took detective Jill Smith and her colleagues on a wild chase into a deep, overgrown ravine, the game led to murder. The dead woman was Madeleine Riordan. A firebrand attorney who was not above an act of civil disobedience herself, Madeleine spent her last days in a nursing home that was perched on the edge of a ravine. Praying into the extraordinary life and times of Madeleine Riordan, Jill discovered a strange connection between the meter capers and the frail, cancer stricken woman who had once been an unyielding defender of individual liberties. And then Jill found something a crime Madelene had witnessed, and died trying to stop. . .

From bestselling author Susan Dunlap comes this wry, indecently entertaining mystery involving politics, murder—and nudity. Where else but in Berkeley, California, could naked protesters, competing health clubs, and ex-sixties radicals add up to murder? And who else would find herself smack in the middle of this crisis than back-on-the-beat Detective Jill Smith, the beloved protagonist of seven previous Susan Dunlap mysteries? During a protest of the recent city ordinance against nudity, Jill is called in to put a stop to a slew of naked protesters. While she's at it, she runs into Bryn Wiley, founder of a local gym, who complains of vandalism, and suspects that the culprit is Sam Johnson, a hostile ex-sixties radical who owns a competing health club. Jill starts to investigate, but is halted by a much larger Bryn is shot at close range, and a lot of questions need to be answered. Who shot Bryn and why? What happened to all the idealists who are dropping their values and selling out? And how is the irrepressible Jill Smith going to figure it all out?

Berkeley, California's, tireless cop, Jill Smith, is at it again. On less than good terms with her department - after all, Jill is not known for her blind obedience to authority - she is summoned by her fellow justice-seeker, the irascible, pizza-loving private eye Herman Ott, to the lobby of Berkeley's elegant Claremont Hotel, for reasons she can't understand and he won't divulge. But when she gets there, Ott has changed his mind and decides to play dumb. He'll call her in an hour to explain, he promises. He doesn't. When Jill checks up on him the next day, she comes up empty-handed. Except for one corpse in his car and another corpse in his office. Ott is surrounded by dead bodies, but he himself seems to have evaporated into thin air. As Jill works to find her missing friend, she finds herself estranged from the police department that hired her, and on her own in a tangled web of bureaucracy, city politics, and murder.