Serenade describes the lethal triangle of a famous opera singer, a young conductor, and a Mexican-Indian prostitute. In Love's Lovely Counterfeit a group of gangsters struggles to maintain its stranglehold on a Midwestern city. Set in the mining countryof Appalachia, The Butterfly is a hair-raising story of incest and mistaken identity. All three books are classic examples of the roman noir, written with telegraphic succinctness and an enduring vision of the dark corners of the American psyche.