It is late December 1999 and hot, dry winds blow across Los Angeles and its surrounding area. Known as the Santa Ana’s, the winds are primarily responsible for the deadly fires consuming many acres of land.

Two years ago, Sammy Greene relocated from the Washington, D.C. area to Los Angeles, California after losing her job as an investigative reporter. She now works the night shift at a small budget radio station with a call-in show called Sammy Greene on the L.A. Scene. The new gig gives her the opportunity to freely express her opinion about various timely topics and to encourage listener participation that sometimes results in lively on air conversation.

Los Angeles is a city of contrasts. Along with the beautiful people who are so often mainstays at parties and nightclubs, there is an underbelly of darkness and evil that is seldom seen by the rest of us. When the daughter of a friend of Sammy’s ends up in the morgue, Sammy begins to dig into how the young woman got involved in the high-end escort business, and why is she now a burn victim found in the aftermath of the fire.

Sammy also runs into Reed, her old flame when she was in Washington, D.C. and now a cardiac fellow at a major hospital. The two work closely together to sort out a possible mistaken identity of the woman in the morgue.

Sammy finally calls in the father of the suspected dead girl and asks for his help in finding out the truth about his daughter’s death. Also in the mix is a controlling Madam who provides Escorts for very rich men and runs her business with an iron fist.

Sammy also connects with her estranged father, Jeffrey Greene, a real estate tycoon who is tied in with a crooked U.S. congressman with a political agenda, a CIA operative who has a secret that could cause the deaths of millions, and a dirty bomb that could bring even more tragedy to the City of Angeles.

Devil Wind, written by Deborah Shlian and Linda Reid, is the follow-up to Dead Air. The story is fast paced and the several plots and subplots deftly intertwined throughout the book come together in a harrowing, but satisfying, finish.

There is much made throughout the novel of the upcoming Y2K that will remind many of us of the scare tactics leading to the new millennium, the year 2000, when many believed the world was coming to an end. The authors got it right in the tension and fear that ran rampant during that time.

In fact, two important characters play a prominent role in this thriller - the Santa Ana devil winds and the Y2K threat.

As the reader moves through the sometimes complicated storyline, numerous surprises along the way will keep them on their toes. The tension increases as the death toll rises and with that, the need by authorities to pull out all stops to prevent a disaster that could flatten the whole Los Angeles basin.

A special thank you goes to Oceanview Publishing for providing a complimentary copy of Devil Wind for our review. If you are interested in purchasing the two books of this series, they are available at Amazon.com.