New Releases by Stuart M. Kaminsky

As a hard-boiled Hollywood PI enlists Al Capone''s help to save the Marx Brothers, Kaminsky "makes the totally wacky possible" (The Washington Post). It''s 1941 and the Marx Brothers'' first movie for MGM, Go West, has the country in stitches. But now Chico Marx is worried he''s going to need stitches when he receives a severed ear in the mail--a simple message from a Chicago bookie who wants $120,000, or else. Chico is baffled because, although he loves to gamble, he''s never made a bet in Chicago. Desperate, he turns to the king of Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, who puts in a call to Toby Peters. A Hollywood private detective who''s proven himself adept at keeping scandals out of the tabloids, Peters flies to Florida for an interview with Al Capone, deposed lord of the Chicago underworld. The retired bootlegger''s mind has gone soft, and he doesn''t know anything about Chico''s bookie, but he suggests Peters speak to his brother. With Scarface''s good word as an introduction, the PI heads to Chicago. But it will take more than a good sense of humor to keep Groucho, Harpo, and especially Chico from getting axed. Edgar Award-winner Stuart Kaminsky''s "Toby Peters series was a delight. They were written with more than a dash of humor and featured a variety of improbable real-life characters, ranging from the Marx Brothers to Judy Garland" (Library Journal).

From Hollywood''s Golden Age to a rock ''n'' roll tragedy, this pair of detective novels from two award-winning maestros of mystery hits all the right notes. From Edgar Award–winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky, Dancing in the Dark shines a light on the 1940s Los Angeles dancing scene. Paired with Ellery Queen Award–winning author Ed Gorman''s "gripping, amusing, thoughtful and hugely entertaining" The Day the Music Died, these two kooky and delightful mysteries are now available in one volume (Dean Koontz). Dancing in the Dark by Stuart M. Kaminsky: It''s going to take some fancy footwork for hard-boiled Hollywood private detective Toby Peters to get Fred Astaire off the hook. After giving a gangster''s moll dancing lessons, he tires of her making passes at him and hires the famously discreet private investigator to break the news gently. When a killer cuts in and the moll ends up dead, Peters must take the lead in solving the case . . . or face the music himself. The Day the Music Died by Ed Gorman: After his rock ''n'' roll hero, Buddy Holly, dies in a plane crash, young Iowa lawyer and part-time PI Sam McCain just wants to play his records and grieve—until the nephew of an eccentric judge kills himself after his trophy wife is murdered. The police see it as a clear-cut murder-suicide, but Sam wants to know more. But diving into this mystery will get dangerous faster than he can say "bye, bye, Miss American Pie."

Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov fights to stop a vendetta against the acrobats of the Moscow circus. A drunk perches atop the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov sighs. After years fighting to become a top detective, he has suffered a demotion to the minor crimes unit, which means the lunatic on the statue is his responsibility. But the limping policeman fails to talk the distraught man down, and with a perfect somersault, acrobat Valerian Duznetzov makes the last leap of his storied career. Across town, Duznetzov''s partner, Oleg, waits for him under.

A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew''s murder in this "masterly creation" that puts the Edgar Award–winning author in "the Parker/Paretsky league" ( Chicago Tribune). When you''re a sixty-two-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman''s life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew David has been shot dead and David''s pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it''s up to Lieberman to track down the killers. With the help of his partner, the troubled alcoholic Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman will turn the city upside down to find the men who stole his nephew''s bright future. But as they step out into the howling Chicago wind, it''s clear both partners will need to fight to survive the day that started out terrible and is about to get a lot worse. This day in the life of two veteran Chicago cops is "beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives'' lives" ( The New York Times Book Review).

A "chilling . . . stunning thriller" from the Edgar Award–winning author of Exercise in Terror ( Booklist). It is 1957, and Jean Kaiser is pretending to sleep. When her parents go to bed, she''ll turn her radio on low, and groove to Elvis. But from her parents'' room, she hears something strange—her mother calling her name in a choking, terrified voice so chilling that Jean assumes it can''t be real, and wills herself to sleep. When she awakens in the morning, the nightmare has come true—a killer has slaughtered her parents in their bed. More than two decades later, Jean has done her best to move past her childhood trauma, parlaying a degree in psychology into a position as the host of a radio call-in show. One night, an anonymous caller shakes her to the core when he brings up details that remind her of her parents'' murder. When Jean and her daughter, Angie, get home, they find their pet parakeet crushed to death over Jean''s bed. Her parents'' killer has reemerged ready to tie up loose ends. The nightmare never ended, and now Jean and Angie must fight—or die.

A veteran Chicago cop who''s also a mensch, "Lieberman is endearing, wise in his crochets, weary with his wisdom" ( The Washington Post Book World). Thirty-three years ago, Connie Gower pulled a gun in a synagogue. He had come to avenge his brother, a two-bit hoodlum who''d been killed in a shootout with a young cop named Abe Lieberman. But Lieberman outsmarted him, and put Gower in jail. After serving his time, for the next few decades Gower bounced around the Chicago underworld, making a name for himself as a second-rate mob enforcer. Fate is a funny thing. When Gower gets arrested in Yuma, Arizona, it''s an aged Abe Lieberman who goes to bring him home, leaving his longtime partner Bill Hanrahan back in the windy city to put up with the hot air of his racist substitute. Handcuffed to each other, Lieberman and his prisoner are about to board the plane when a geriatric janitor shuffles towards them and shoots Gower dead. Connie Gower was scum, but killing him is still murder, and Lieberman is determined to find out who ordered the hit—and why. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky''s The Last Dark Place is "an entertaining crime novel that should send new readers in search of its predecessors" ( Publishers Weekly).

With his Chicago cops, Edgar Award winner "Kaminsky is hard to beat for a thoughtful, well-plotted, well-written mystery" ( The Washington Post Book World). Most days, the counters at Maish''s Deli on Chicago''s North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish''s is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple—the fifth in a row—and stolen a priceless Torah, and only Abe Lieberman can set things right. A veteran cop whose low-key attitude and sardonic humor conceal an intense commitment to justice, Lieberman is taking the break-in very personally—the synagogue''s president just happens to be his wife. With the help of his lapsed Catholic partner, Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman must straddle the roles of detective and diplomat, tracking down the thugs who defaced the temples while at the same time brokering peace between the North Side''s warring factions before they tear the city apart. Because when it comes to the law, the cop they call "Rabbi" understands that while he may work for the Chicago police department, he also serves a higher authority. Abe Lieberman is "smart, tough, empathetic, and just a tad crazy when circumstances require." And Lieberman''s Law "is a wonderfully rich cop novel" ( Booklist).

Two Chicago cops need to defuse an explosive situation in this "tightly plotted" police procedural ( Chicago Tribune). After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: meet his demands, or he''ll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high. If it''s a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish''s deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one''s giving him a choice. It''s up to Lieberman and his longtime partner, Bill Hanrahan—aka the Rabbi and Father Murphy—to play Bernie''s game, betting their lives on a madman''s whim. With a crazed cop holding "enough explosives to blow the North Side of Chicago to kingdom come . . . Kaminsky mines plenty of suspense" ( The New York Times Book Review).

In this mystery introducing a hard-boiled Soviet police inspector, “Kaminsky gets Russia right” (Ed McBain). Aleksander Granovsky has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system. In two days he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. It is a show trial, and there is no doubt he will be convicted and executed, yet before he dies, he intends to tell the truth one more time. But this is Moscow, where death is never heroic. While writing his final speech in his government flat, Granovsky is surprised by an assassin, who pierces his heart with the point of a rusty scythe. The case is given to Porfiry Rostnikov, a veteran Moscow police inspector with a knack for navigating the labyrinths of Soviet bureaucracy. A bruising bear of a man, whose love of weightlifting and American pizza has left him as squat and powerful as a .38 bullet, Rostnikov may be the toughest cop in Moscow. This winter, his challenge is not just to find the killer, but to survive the investigation, as every question he asks takes him closer to exposing the dark heart of the KGB. A Cold War–era hero, Porfiry Rostnikov is “quite simply the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko in Gorky Park.” (San Francisco Examiner)

This thrilling crime novel features “the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko” (San Francisco Examiner). After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his Jewish wife. But just before the deal is concluded, Brezhnev’s death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders—one of which may lead somewhere very big indeed. An elderly Jewish man is shot to death in his bathtub by killers who steal nothing but a worthless brass candlestick. And as the brutal Moscow summer wears on, the police find themselves the targets of car thieves and snipers. With the help of his two faithful lieutenants, Karpo and Tkach, Rostnikov needs to find a way to solve these cases and salvage his good name—if it doesn’t cost him his life. The Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series is one more reason why New York Times–bestselling author Tony Hillerman says, “Never miss a Kaminsky book.”

Moscow’s gone to the dogs in the “imaginative” Edgar Award–winning crime series about a conscientious Russian cop (The New York Times Book Review). With packs of stray wild canines roaming Moscow, it was inevitable that enterprising criminals would find a way to get rich. As dogfighting became big business, the Mafia got involved, and venues upgraded from alleys and garages to private arenas with padded seats. Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has assigned Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva to go undercover and bust up a dogfighting ring. But the only ones more vicious than the dogs are the ones who profit from them. Speaking of fighting in the streets, an international drug cartel has chosen Moscow as its next port of call. One man stands in their way—a young Russian mobster whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe. It’s up to Rostnikov and the Office of Special Investigation to prevent a full-scale bloodbath. “As usual, Kaminsky manages to make the postlapsarian fracas strangely engrossing. His major characters are vivid and varied . . . Good storytelling in yet another of a distinguished series.” —Kirkus Reviews

Sheldon Minck, le dentiste miteux qui partage un local avec le détective Toby Peters, est arrêté, accusé du meurtre de sa femme Mildred tuée par un carreau d’arbalète dans Lincoln Park. Une certaine Billie Cassin, qui n’est autre que l’actrice Joan Crawford, est témoin. Minck explique à son ami Toby qu’il s’entraînait au tir dans le parc, après avoir rejoint un groupe survivaliste dont l’inspirateur est John Fenimore Cooper.Joan Crawford charge Toby Peters d’éviter que son nom n’apparaisse dans la presse en lien avec une affaire criminelle. Mais Minck parvient à s’évader. Il est traqué par les survivalistes, tandis que John Crawford, elle, est prise en otage...C’est avec plaisir qu’on retrouve, dans ce divertissement concocté de main de maître par Stuart Kaminsky, tous les protagonistes des deux précédents romans de la série ; le nain bibliophile et polyglotte Gunter, et Mme Plaut la logeuse, aux terrifiantes recettes...

A 1940s Hollywood gumshoe heads to San Francisco to foil a very real phantom of the opera in this “believable and entertaining” mystery (Publishers Weekly). 1942 is a dangerous year to stage Madama Butterfly. Although Puccini’s masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension a year after Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against cast and crew. But someone is doing more than making idle threats—a self-styled phantom of the opera. When a workman on the opera house renovation is killed, the maestro, Leopold Stokowski, the conductor who starred in Disney’s Fantasia, calls Hollywood PI Toby Peters to catch a madman. With two days to go before opening night, the attacks are building to a crescendo. As Peters hunts for the phantom, he falls for one of the company starlets. But they must tread lightly, or face a finale far more tragic than anything dreamed of by Puccini. “Hardly a pause separates the frightful, madly comic and nostalgic incidents made believable and entertaining in Kaminsky’s artful handling” (Publishers Weekly).

A PI performs some fancy footwork to protect Fred Astaire as “Edgar winner Kaminsky effortlessly choreographs Hollywood history . . . and dirty doings” (Publishers Weekly). Sometimes fools must step in where Fred Astaire fears to tap. Luna Martin, the moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster nicknamed “Fingers” (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood’s finest hoofer—and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. To sidestep the flirtations of the lead-footed lady, Astaire hires private investigator Toby Peters to pose as a dance instructor and take over the lessons. But when someone cuts in and cuts Luna’s throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can’t refuse: Find the killer—or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave. Now, instead of punishing the parquet, the silver screen’s most famous song-and-dance man is pounding the pavement with his new partner—a rumpled, middle-aged gumshoe who just wants to live to shuffle through another day . . .

The final Toby Peters Hollywood whodunit from the Edgar Award–winning author is “a marvelous magic trick of a mystery” featuring Harry Blackstone (Booklist, starred review). When an anonymous rival demands that master illusionist Harry Blackstone reveal his secrets on stage or die, the magician hires Toby Peters and his brother, ex-cop Phil Pevsner, to run security for his show at the famous Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Of course, Peters doesn’t expect the job to include replacing a showgirl for Blackstone’s show-stopping sawing-a-woman-in-half trick after the saboteur has stolen the blade. Peters’s brief career in magic is only the first surprise as a blackmailing con man turns up shot in a dressing room backstage and one of Blackstone’s competitors ends up dead at a testimonial dinner. With “The Great Blackstone” now a murder suspect, the sleuth will need to pull a rabbit out of a hat to solve this mystery . . .

“A page-turning romp” from the Edgar Award–winning author featuring a nutty dentist, a killer crossbow, and Joan Crawford in 1940s Hollywood (Booklist, starred review). Mildred Minck is an unremarkable woman—until one tragic night in June 1944 when she becomes the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The prime suspect is her husband, dentist Sheldon Minck, who’s found standing over her body with the weapon in hand, raving that only Joan Crawford can identify the killer. It seems like a natural insanity defense, but Sheldon wants his neighbor, private investigator Toby Peters, to prove his innocence. The dentist is telling the truth about one thing: Joan Crawford was there. The steely silver screen beauty is in the middle of a comeback, about to star in a film noir based on a James M. Cain novel, and insists Peters keep her name out of the papers. In exchange, the glamorous eyewitness points the sleuth toward the Survivors of the Future, a band of crackpot survivalists that the dentist was hoping to join. Sheldon’s new friends want him sprung, but only because they want him dead . . . With its “irresistible” title, Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s penultimate Toby Peters mystery shines a spotlight on the legendary screen diva as well as one of the favorite supporting characters of the series (The Washington Post).

Goodness has nothing to do with it as a hard-luck private eye in 1940s Hollywood takes a case for legendary silver screen sex symbol Mae West. In the early days of talking pictures, the greatest sex symbol in Hollywood was the platinum-blonde bad girl Mae West. Naughty and gorgeous with a razor-sharp wit, West wrote her own material and controlled her own image—until the censors came in and outlawed the racy repartee that made her famous. By the forties, her star has faded and she''s banking everything on a scandalous memoir that she hopes will set the stage for a comeback. When the only copy is stolen, she calls in a favor from an old beau—the brother of wisecracking PI Toby Peters. When Mae West asks, "Why don''t you come up sometime and see me?" you don''t say no. Peters arrives at a party at West''s house, where every guest is a man dressed as the woman herself—and one of them may be the thief who stole the manuscript. But before he can tear off the culprit''s wig, Peters finds that this is about more than theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind. The star of Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky''s fun forties private eye series, "Peters is a good guy with a sense of humor, and every appearance he makes is a welcome one" ( Booklist).

The first in a mystery series set in 1940s Hollywood, where a hard-boiled private eye helps a cast of real-life stars: “Nostalgic fun” (Publishers Weekly). Hollywood, 1940: It’s been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy’s arm. Since then he’s scratched out a living as a private detective—missing persons and bodyguard work mostly—but now his old friends, the Warners, have a job for him. Someone has mailed the studio a picture of Errol Flynn caught in a compromising position with an underage woman. Although Flynn insists it’s a fake, the studio is taking no chances. Peters is to deliver the blackmailer five thousand dollars and return with the photo negative. It should be simple, but Flynn, a swashbuckler on and off the screen, has a way of making things complicated. Soon it’s up to Peters to clear Flynn’s name, following a twisted trail that surprisingly leads to the set of The Maltese Falcon, involving Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet. As real-life PI Toby Peters meets Bogie’s Sam Spade, he doesn’t fall prey to being star-struck. But he may still fall prey to a killer. “If you like your mysteries Sam Spade tough, with tongue in cheek and a touch of the theatrical, then the Toby Peters series is just your ticket.” —Houston Chronicle

A forties Hollywood PI does not forsake Gary Cooper: "Like all of Toby [Peters''s] adventures, High Midnight is high entertainment" ( The Cincinnati Post). When laconic leading man Gary Cooper needs a detective, he does the smart thing and hires Toby Peters, sleuth to the stars. But the man he finds in Peters''s office isn''t the famously discreet private eye—it''s the dentist who shares his office, who''s always had a fantasy of playing gumshoe, and happily agrees to take care of Cooper''s blackmail problem. Impersonating Peters, the dentist bungles the case disastrously, and setting it right will be like pulling teeth. Cooper is in trouble with a Chicago gangster named Lombardi, who''s come to Los Angeles intending to set himself up as the cold cuts king of California. Thanks to the dentist''s meddling, he wants the actor dead. When Cooper hightails it with his old drinking buddy Ernest Hemingway, it''s up to Peters to avoid a showdown. High Midnight shows once again how Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky "has a delightfully original mind enriching—rather than just borrowing from—an old literary form" ( Los Angeles Times).

Someone''s gunning for John Wayne in this "well-plotted" mystery set in 1940s Hollywood featuring a wisecracking private eye ( Publishers Weekly). Something about Lewis Vance''s story doesn''t add up. The guy claims to be John Wayne''s stand-in, and he''s called Det. Toby Peters about a possible job involving the star. But when Peters meets him in a seedy hotel room, Vance slips him a mickey. After Peters comes to, his head pounding, he sees the real John Wayne pointing a .38 at him. Vance was not exactly a dead ringer for the Duke—but he is dead, lying on the hotel bed with a bullet hole drilled in his forehead. And it''s a dead heat as to who''s more confused—the gumshoe or the movie star. On screen no one gets the drop on the Duke, but in real life someone''s trying to kill him. Wayne hires Peters to get to the bottom of things, and soon he''s tangled up in a twisted conspiracy that also involves a dubious desk clerk named Teddy Spaghetti, the Russians, and none other than the Little Tramp himself, Charlie Chaplin. "As in the other entries in this series, Kaminsky''s use of period detail and his appealing renderings of real-life celebrities provide the strongest recommendations for this well-plotted mystery." — Publishers Weekly

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Howard Hughes hires Hollywood gumshoe Toby Peters to find stolen blueprints in the "marvelously entertaining" series ( Newsday). Millionaire Howard Hughes likes his secrets. He likes to keep them—and he definitely doesn''t like having them stolen. Hollywood PI Toby Peters has a rep for being discreet. So when the film tycoon and aviation magnate needs a detective to very privately investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints taken from his home during one of his fabulous parties, he summons Peters. But what starts as counter-espionage intrigue turns into a triple murder, and Peters soon finds himself bait for a killer. As America is pulled into World War II, Peters is just trying to stay alive as a gunman chases him through a deserted television soundstage. With help from some unlikely allies—including Basil Rathbone, the silver screen''s Sherlock Holmes, and gangster/patriot Bugsy Siegel—Peters is determined to dodge the bullets long enough to recover the blueprints before they fall into the wrong hands. The Chicago Sun-Times calls the Toby Peters mysteries "entertainment at its best" as Edgar Award–winning author Stuart Kaminsky takes readers on a rollicking tour of Hollywood in the forties.

Frankly, a killer doesn''t give a damn about offing Clark Gable—or Toby Peters—in this "fast-paced and colorful addition to a very successful series" ( Publishers Weekly). On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick''s studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set ablaze to provide a backdrop for the climax of what Selznick promised to be the movie of the century: Gone with the Wind. Toby Peters, then just a studio security guard, was on hand to help keep the Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword. Five years later, Peters scratches out a living as a private detective for Hollywood''s best known stars. Now it''s Clark Gable who needs his help. He''s been getting death threats. On the back of a cryptic poem, the sleuth finds a list of people on scene the night the extra died. Two are already dead, and the rest are next. Sure enough, one of those marked for death is Gable. The other is Toby Peters . . . "Nostalgic readers with a yen for the good old days . . . will find Kaminsky''s story entertaining, clever, eminently readable, and chock-full of snippets from Hollywood''s Golden Age." — Booklist

In this “marvelously entertaining” mystery, a hard-boiled Hollywood private eye investigates a murdered Munchkin on the set of The Wizard of Oz (Newsday). A year after The Wizard of Oz’s smash success, the yellow brick road is crumbling. The famous sets have been left standing on a soundstage in the depths of the MGM back lot in case the studio greenlights a sequel. But that doesn’t explain what Judy Garland is doing there—or why she finds a Munchkin in full costume, lying facedown with a knife buried in his back. To avoid even a whiff of scandal and protect Judy’s wholesome image, the studio boss hires Toby Peters, a Hollywood private detective with a reputation for discretion. But as Peters quickly learns, the real threat to Miss Garland isn’t the tabloids—it’s the psychopathic killer who stalks the back lot and plans to kill the young actress next. In addition to the murder mystery swirling around Judy Garland, the second Toby Peters novel features cameos from “Clark Gable and Raymond Chandler [who] give an assist in this imaginative mystery recreated from yesterday’s movie-land” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland).

When it comes to sex, lies often follow... and in the dark heart of the city, death can be the ultimate payback! Moonstone Books, publisher of fine books and comics since 1995, is proud to present this landmark collection of all-new, original noir stories with the theme of ''sex for sale''. Written by some of today''s top crime writers, Sex, Lies and Private Eyes features a stunning cast of legendary characters from the best mysteries of the past and present, including Alo Nudger and Fred Carver (John Lutz), Blackshirt (Adi Tantimedh), Candy Matson (Christine Matthews), Domino Lady (Gail Mcabee), Jack Hagee, PI, Kolchak: the Night Stalker and Lai Wan (CJ Henderson), The Envoy (Gary Phillips), Johnny Dollar (David Tischman), Mr. Keen (Mike Bullock), Pat Novak (Steven Grant), Sherlock Holmes (Loren D. Estleman), The Silencers (Fred Van Vliet), The Maze Agency (Mike W. Barr), Toby Peters (Stuart Kaminsky), and Truxton Lewis (Robert Randisi).

Lovable everyman Lew Fonesca, the Man Who Makes Things Work in Sarasota, is once again faced with cases that try his patience and test his sanity. A local curmudgeon who has been campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding is brutally killed. A recent graduate of a public high school for the gifted is arrested for the crime and turns to Lew for help. A semi-retired and much beloved singer of children''s songs is being anonymously pushed to leave Sarasota, threatened with exposure as a sexual predator. It is up to Lew to uncover the blackmailer and determine whether there is any truth to the accusation. Lew has decided that life is worth more than just going through the motions. But will the good life that Lew so richly deserves elude him as he uncovers some very sad truths? His final choice--do the right thing and see his happiness evaporate... or betray a trust and stay happy... At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan once again walk the mean streets of Chicago, trying to maintain their normal lives while keeping the bad guys at bay, in this 10th novel in the series.