Salt Lake City is hotter than hell. The Church of the Latter-day Saints is about to celebrate Pioneer Day, in honor of the Saints who crossed half a continent searching for a home. And in the sun-scorched streets, PI Moroni Traveler, fallen Saint and former football star, is searching for a vicious serial killer. The murderer s calling card is a videotape of his beautiful victims beautiful before the self-styled Jack the Ripper vents his savage, woman-hating rage. The next target is Claire Bennion, the ex-girlfriend Traveler can t manage to forget. The Church wants the killer stopped, no questions asked. But Traveler has his own reasons for facing down a weird mountain cult, Zion s powerful elite, and a murderer bent on paying for his own sins in innocent blood. "

" How many times have I told you? Never get involved with the church hierarchy. "

Words of wisdom, surely, but Moroni Traveler can t seem to take his father s advice. Salt Lake City private investigators, Moroni and his father, Martin, maintain an uneasy truce with the Church of Latter-day Saints. But Moroni owes a debt to his boyhood friend Willis Tanner, now one of the top-ranking officials in the LDS, and Willis has come to collect. Lael Woolley, grandniece of the First Prophet, the head of the Mormon church on earth, has been kidnapped, and the prophet believes only Traveler, a gentile, can rescue her. Moroni agrees, although reluctantly in Salt Lake City you just don t say no to the LDS. He and his father set out to find Lael with carte blanche from the prophet and the assistance of three enterprising, offbeat drifters who live in the lobby of the Travelers office building. Their search takes them around the state and into the church s extensive genealogical records, pointing to a subversive Mormon feminist group that may or may not be responsible for Lael s disappearance. "

" How many times have I told you? Never get involved with the church hierarchy. "

Words of wisdom, surely, but Moroni Traveler can t seem to take his father s advice. Salt Lake City private investigators, Moroni and his father, Martin, maintain an uneasy truce with the Church of Latter-day Saints. But Moroni owes a debt to his boyhood friend Willis Tanner, now one of the top-ranking officials in the LDS, and Willis has come to collect. Lael Woolley, grandniece of the First Prophet, the head of the Mormon church on earth, has been kidnapped, and the prophet believes only Traveler, a gentile, can rescue her. Moroni agrees, although reluctantly in Salt Lake City you just don t say no to the LDS. He and his father set out to find Lael with carte blanche from the prophet and the assistance of three enterprising, offbeat drifters who live in the lobby of the Travelers office building. Their search takes them around the state and into the church s extensive genealogical records, pointing to a subversive Mormon feminist group that may or may not be responsible for Lael s disappearance. "

" How many times have I told you? Never get involved with the church hierarchy. "

Words of wisdom, surely, but Moroni Traveler can t seem to take his father s advice. Salt Lake City private investigators, Moroni and his father, Martin, maintain an uneasy truce with the Church of Latter-day Saints. But Moroni owes a debt to his boyhood friend Willis Tanner, now one of the top-ranking officials in the LDS, and Willis has come to collect. Lael Woolley, grandniece of the First Prophet, the head of the Mormon church on earth, has been kidnapped, and the prophet believes only Traveler, a gentile, can rescue her. Moroni agrees, although reluctantly in Salt Lake City you just don t say no to the LDS. He and his father set out to find Lael with carte blanche from the prophet and the assistance of three enterprising, offbeat drifters who live in the lobby of the Travelers office building. Their search takes them around the state and into the church s extensive genealogical records, pointing to a subversive Mormon feminist group that may or may not be responsible for Lael s disappearance. "

Ace shortstop Pepper Dalton has finally learned to hit or so it seems to the good people of Salt Lake City. Moroni Traveler, a private eye named for an angel and cut from the same cloth as his hell-bent father, is hired to prove that Pepper did not kill his sister with a baseball bat. A boyhood hero of Moroni s, Pepper is living, potbellied proof that the past, like everything else, just ain t what it used to be.

While the Mormons use computers and private security men to keep tabs in their town, and Moroni s former girlfriend pulls a paternity suit on Moroni s father, the case of the ex-shortstop and his murdered sister is growing more sinister all the time. With a religious fanatic, a slick church lawyer, and an old ballplayer s lifelong dream involved, Moroni knows this is a story about how the road to glory is paved with blood."

Ace shortstop Pepper Dalton has finally learned to hit or so it seems to the good people of Salt Lake City. Moroni Traveler, a private eye named for an angel and cut from the same cloth as his hell-bent father, is hired to prove that Pepper did not kill his sister with a baseball bat. A boyhood hero of Moroni s, Pepper is living, potbellied proof that the past, like everything else, just ain t what it used to be.

While the Mormons use computers and private security men to keep tabs in their town, and Moroni s former girlfriend pulls a paternity suit on Moroni s father, the case of the ex-shortstop and his murdered sister is growing more sinister all the time. With a religious fanatic, a slick church lawyer, and an old ballplayer s lifelong dream involved, Moroni knows this is a story about how the road to glory is paved with blood."