In street parlance, “the dutch” is another expression for suicide—and that’s what must have happened to successful but overweight dot.com executive Ellen Carnine when her broken body is found 150 feet below the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in downtown Cleveland. Her father, though, wants Milan to discover the reason for her suicide, and the search for the truth leads Milan into the unfamiliar territory of Internet chat rooms, where he learns more about the people sitting at their computers than he ever wanted to know—and uncovers the most brutal, heinous crime of his career.

“Brilliantly plotted, with a powerhouse climax.” (Booklist)

Excerpt: The dark space under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge is, I think, a singularly lousy place to die.

Jumping off a bridge had to be one of the worst ways to go—and I felt sad for a moment that a woman had taken her own life, but after that I didn’t give it much thought. Bad things happen to nice people every day, and while poet John Donne had a valid point when he wrote that each man’s death diminishes us, the fact is that the death of a complete stranger doesn’t diminish us very much. Practically speaking, we can’t allow it to. We all have our own lives and our own concerns, and we couldn’t even function if we went around feeling diminished every time somebody succumbs to old age or takes a notion to do a half-gainer off a bridge.

Publisher: Gray & Company (2006)

Pages: 288

Original Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (2001)