THE NIGHT CREW by John Sandford - ADVANCE READING COPY

Anna Batory runs the night crew. Small, dark-haired, shy but tough, a Wisconsin farm girl on the streets of Los Angeles, she roams the city with her small band of video free-lancers in their truck from ten to dawn, looking for news: accidents, robberies, murders, demonstrations - anything they can shoot and sell to the local stations or the networks. It's an exhilarating life ... until the day two deaths shake their world. The first is the jumper. Five stories up, perched on the ledge of a hotel window, dark pants, white shirt, just standing there - and then he's gone, falling through the air toward their cameras. The second is Jason, one of Anna's cameramen. Strangely affected by the jumper, he quits the scene early that night, not to be seen again until his body turns up on the beach several hours later, shot in the head. The police wonder if it's drug-related, but Anna isn't so sure, and the more she looks into it on her own, the more the ghosts of the past - hers, Jason's, and finally the jumper's - begin to emerge, until her whole world turns as dark and dangerous as the night itself.