The Web

His 11th adventure takes Southern California psychologist/sleuth Alex Delaware to a remote Pacific island where hidden evils of the past and present are gradually, harrowingly, brought to light. While his L.A. house is being renovated, Alex, his guitar-making lover, Robin Castagna, and their doted-upon French bulldog, Spike, depart Malibu (home base in the most recent Self-Defense) for a four-month stay on the island of Aruk, where Alex has agreed to help Bill Moreland, a doctor who has lived and worked there since the end of WWII, organize his decades' worth of notes. Aruk, not far from the Bikini atoll, has only the look of paradise. While sorting through Moreland's files, which are stored near the eccentric doctor's extensive spider "zoo," Alex learns of the recent mutilation death of a young local woman, with its suggestions of cannibalistic ritual.