If you find your dad, what happens next? When she turns 18, unhappy Lidda Daniels leaves Southern California to look for Charlie, her father, a professional gambler who abandoned her years before. On her way to Vegas, she picks up Colonel, a video store clerk whom she finds attractive even though they've never spoken. He's is happy to go, in part because he sees himself as a great poker player. It takes Lidda time to track down Charlie, who's involved in his own tangles: he's freshly back in Vegas for high-stakes poker with Tony, an old nemesis. Tony is jealous of Charlie over a woman, plus Tony has a new habit of hiring a hit man to kill anyone who beats him. Can anyone win?

A man who killed 13 years before goes out on the loose to kill his victims' children.

Parisian murder detective commissioner Pierre Niemans is called to Gueron, a self-sufficient, prestigious university in a mountain valley, to investigate the murder on 32-year old professor and librarian Rémy Caillois, whose corps was found 50 meters high on a steep mountain side, naked, horribly covered in bruises and bleeding wounds, the result of some five hours of bestial torture including quasi-surgical amputation of hands cauterized to prevent bleeding to death- and eyes. Guernon is a closed society of virtually incestuous scientists, de facto succeeding to their parents' posts; the eye-doctor, formerly on the staff, says hereditary genetic diseases are the price of such elitism, but in recent years spread to the simple farming families. Inspector Max Kerkerian examines two crimes in the town: a school break-in with theft of old photos and archive papers as well as a graveyard desecration of Judith Herault, the daughter of local nun Andrée, who lives in a dark cell since 15 years and mumbles the demons who made an attempt of both of their lives have returned to prevent the child endanger their secret. As both police investigations continue, the loner sleuths meet; secrets and other corpses are found, till it all ties together.

Julia finds 300 million pesetas hidden in a dead man's house while selling an apartment. She's a 40-ish real estate agent now forced to face the wrath of a very peculiar community (of neighbors), headed by an unscrupulous administrator. Black humor gives way to suspense, closely followed by horror that doesn't take long in coming to a head in undisguised pandemonium.