Brig Ellis is a new age private investigator with old school values. He gets a call from an old flame seeking protection for her artist husband. What Brig doesn't know, until he makes contact with the couple, is that the artist paints with the cremated ashes of human remains. While the painter's profile is rising, so too is the number of people less than thrilled with his work — and some of them are determined to stop him one way or another.Ellis struggles to keep the detractors at a distance, the artist safe, and the old flame from igniting a new spark while he looks for a potential killer and wrestles with his own convictions about the moral conundrums surrounding this fascinating but questionable form of DYING ART.Joe Kilgore has won awards for his novels, novellas, screenplays, and short stories.