Murder in the Molten Sea

A trucker hauling a huge sealed tank rumored to contain contraband antiquities goes missing after wrecking his rig, his alligator-gnawed remains later turning up in a Houston bayou. Then three nude men—including a prominent member of Houston high society—turn up shot dead in an antique bronze cauldron fitted out as a hot tub, the vessel a model of the fabled “molten sea” that stood outside King Solomon’s temple. A Rice University professor is framed for the triple homicide, a beautiful young eyewitness is murdered, and a Houston Community College coed working on the side as an escort becomes the killer’s next target.

Convinced that knowing more about the ancient-looking cauldron and its Hebrew inscription might help crack the case, undercover cop Jon Chin seeks out brilliant but eccentric ancient history scholar Matt Matthias. One of the latter’s eccentricities is that he restricts his intimate relations with the opposite sex solely to females whose undressed bodies he has first had a chance to preview beforehand on internet escort sites—and the latest undressed body he’s had intimate relations with happens to belong to the young escort who’s been targeted by the killer.

An antiquities-hoarding televangelist, a hit man decked out as a mime with a silenced handgun, a quaint, old Oxford-educated Hebrew professor, and a Rice University coed who pole dances in a nude club are among the characters making their appearance in this offbeat mystery debut.