Soundings in the Dark (The Lyle Dahms Mysteries)

Minneapolis P.I. Lyle Dahms investigates the murder of an old high school buddy. The dead man, now a highly successful software developer, is found repeatedly stabbed with swastikas carved into his corpse. Suspicion promptly falls on the dead man's son, a high school student who had gone virtually overnight from star athlete and scholar to rebellious skinhead whose hate-filled diatribes spare no one, least of all his privileged, liberal father. Dahms soon discovers others with motives to kill his old friend, chief among them a white supremacist leader and publicity-hungry "minister" who frames his racist views as divine law. But before Dahms can close in on the truth, his investigation is hampered by the arrival of the dead man's former girlfriend, now an embittered hooker. Claiming to know who killed his friend, she refuses to tell Dahms for fear that she will be the next victim. She does, however, leave him something. When she bolts, she abandons her three-year-old daughter to his care, leaving Dahms charged with keeping the little girl safe, finding her mother, and solving the murder before the killer can strike again.