Either Detective Franklin Washborne is losing his mind, or something very strange is going on. Assigned a murder case with no witnesses and few clues, Washborne finds himself drawn into a world of high-tech computerized pharmacology and a 40-year-old commune movement where the 1960s still live on. The investigation quickly deteriorates into a labyrinth of dead ends, and before long another body appears on a bench in Huntington Park.

After a dozen years on the force, Franklin’s become disaffected with police culture and increasingly disquieted by the mindless violence of the crimes he investigates. When he starts seeing Robert Louis Stevenson on the streets of San Francisco, he assumes he’s hallucinating. Could this be a result of the head injury he sustained during his military service in Afghanistan? Or is it residual PTSD that is provoking the nightmares and daytime apparitions of a one-time resident who’s been dead for 100 years? And can Franklin keep it together long enough to find a killer?

A murder mystery, a ghost story, an exploration of San Francisco past and present, The Montfort Prescription is anything but your typical police procedural.