Jupiter’s bones. Faye Kellerman. 1999.

Emil Ganz walked out on his family at the age of forty. For twenty years his distraught wife and children spent countless hours and dollars trying to locate him, always hoping for the best though fearing the worst. But Emil Ganz wasn’t the average runaway father. A world-renowned physicist who with his ground-breaking theories of Cosmology had made the night skies his own, Ganz had always been extraordinary. And then, more than a decade after he disappeared, he returned to life. But now he was calling himself Jupiter, leading a new-age cult, preaching a strange philosophy that blended science, mathematics and mysticism-and saying that his own end was nigh, as was that of the world.

And today, five years since he resurfaced, the first part at least of Jupiter’s prophecy has been fulfilled. For Emil Ganz is dead, apparently from a suicidal mix of drugs and alcohol. But Lieutenant Peter Decker, familiar with the activities of the bizarre cult who have been established within his jurisdiction for some time, and a source of panicked concern for many local parents, soon thinks otherwise. ........