Dan August

A well-known race car driver is driving recklessly, and at a very high speed. When a police car gives chase, Gabe Redfern loses control and drives into the lake. The first officer on the scene finds that the driver is naked, and that he has been shot. Dan August knew the race car driver personally. He suspects that the killer is someone close to Gabe, but everyone has an alibi.

A sabotaged school bus is involved in an accident that kills Rivera's niece. Dan wonders if a migrant worker's strike is connected and must find the killer before violence breaks out.

A teenage boy fatally overdoses at a wild party. In order to find the drug supplier, Dan 'sweats out' the heroin-addicted host of the party in an attempt to gain information.

The philanthropist who put Dan through college is found shot to death, and Dan doesn't buy the 'scared burglar' theory.

Dan and the department must investigate a murder at a church, and a former priest is the prime suspect because he refuses to reveal everything he knows about what happened.

Dan tries to help a black activist accused of the murder of a councilman's sister.

The spoiled brat of a daughter of a famous newspaper columnist is found dead on the beach. Dan's investigation is complicated by the columnist, who uses his forum to virtually convict the girl's hippie boyfriend.

A union leader is assassinated, and his rival, who has a police record, is suspected of setting him up to be killed.

Dan checks out the residents of a swinger's apartment complex after a gigolo is murdered.

A beautiful blackmailer dies in a fall from an apartment balcony, and the prime suspect is Dan's old friend, Heap Canfield.

Dan's attempt to clear an AWOL soldier of an MP's murder is hampered by the suspect's uncooperative friends.

College President, who has just fired a controversial professor, is run down in a campus parking lot. The professor preaches resisting authority in the classroom, and tells August he'll not cooperate with the investigation, and any attempt to harass him will result in campus violence.

A missing file from a murdered psychiatrist's office is the key to solving both the doctor's murder and a blackmail plot.

Dan deals with a millionaire, his wife and his right-hand man, all suspects in the murder of a low-level drug pusher.

One murder leads to more killing...Dan's initial investigation is the rape and murder of a young, recently divorced socialite, but as he looks into the case, a mysterious sniper is picking off the suspects, all young men she was last seen with. Dan must now not only search for the sniper, but whomever it was that tipped him off.

An Assistant D.A. refuses to cooperate with Dan, who's looking into the murder of the lawyer's wife.

Retired Judge Anderson lives with his daughter and son-in-law. The judge, who may be suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease, is increasingly paranoid and tormented. One day, the daughter asks the son-in-law to take the judge for a drive. Both agree. As the son-in-law drives through open country with the judge in the back seat, they notice a car behind them getting ready to pass. The son-in-law slows down. As the car comes alongside, the judge suddenly whips out a revolver and fires three times point-blank through the window. The other car careens wildly into a field, tearing up grass and small trees before it comes to rest against the stump of a huge ancient tree struck by lightning years earlier. The incredulous son-in-law drives to the nearest town and calls for help. Dan August and his crew come out and find the driver of the other car dead from the judge's bullets. The judge admits to sneaking the gun because he was sure he was going to get "whacked," and firing at the other car in self-defense. But the dead driver is unarmed and there is no gun in his car or on the ground nearby. Almost everyone assumes that the judge has completely lost his mind and will spend the rest of his life in an institution for the criminally insane. He doesn't get that far, dying by hanging at the end of Act Three. But August realizes someone DID have something to gain by the judge's death, and launches a new search for the gun. When he finds it in the dead tree, he realizes the judge was murdered after all and starts hunting for the killer.

After a young waitress is brutally raped and killed in a city park, Dan orders a round-up of all known sex offenders in the area. When a second body is found nearby, that of a young housewife who apparently died in a car accident, he wonders whether the waitress saw something she shouldn't have seen.

A hot-tempered automobile designer is accused of killing his boss after being fired.

Dan pursues a gang of race track robbers after a patrolman friend of his is gunned down.

Dan wonders if the murder of a soldier who recently returned from Vietnam has anything to do with his marriage to a Vietnamese girl.

The political arena forms the background for Dan's investigation into the brutal murder of a young campaign worker. Among the suspects are the candidate, his son, a reporter and a couple of the candidate's aides.

A young boxer suddenly drops dead in the third round. The autopsy shows an overdose of methamphetamine. Dan August is determined to find the person who drugged out the Boxer.

Dan catches up to a radical wanted for killing a cop, but the man is killed by a sniper before Dan can make the arrest. The question is, was it someone else in his radical group who fired the fatal shot, or was it the millionaire husband of the dead man's lover, or could it have been someone totally unexpected?

A surgeon receives a gift of a bottle of whiskey, which he doesn't need, so he passes it on to a couple of nearby winos, who die from drinking the poisoned spirits inside the bottle. The question is, who is out to kill the surgeon, and Dan gets no help from the uncooperative doctor.

A sniper fires upon Chief Untermeyer and a friend of his whom he'd been visiting, wounding him and killing her. Dan is led to a couple of suspects, an embezzling employee of her company, who is quickly dismissed as a suspect; her grandson, whose only concern seems to be inheriting the old lady's money; and her mysterious boarder, who harbors a deadly secret that he may be willing to kill to keep quiet.