Chris Shovelin is a private eye, investigating petty theft in a sleepy British seaside town. An ex-alcoholic, ex-hippy and ex-bigshot investigator, middle age has had a calming, numbing effect on him. But all this is to change when he is summoned to La Jolla, California, by an old PI friend from the sixties, Wilbur Jefferson. Shovelin figures it is something important from the urgency of his friend's emails, and the couriered Amex cheques, air ticket and keys to his apartment. And when he arrives at the apartment he realises just how important: Jefferson is lying by the couch with a bullet through his brain. Dazed and grieving for his dead friend, Shovelin is contacted by a woman named China Heart. She was Jefferson's final employer, hiring him to track down her missing half-brother, Jerry Lennox. And now she wants Shovelin to take over where his dead friend left off...A violent, blood-soaked chase along the length of America's West Coast - Homage is a gripping and relentless thriller from one of Britain's finest living novelists