Even though set in Cleveland, The Indian Sign is not about the city’s baseball team, but an elderly Indian man, dressed in Native American clothing and waist-length iron-gray braids, sitting on a bench in a driving snowstorm across the street from Milan Jacovich’s apartment. When he’s found floating in the Cuyahoga River the next day, Milan feels the need to do something about it, even heading for the old man’s home town in the middle of Michigan. He also works another case, checking the background of a new accountant at a local toy manufacturer. Milan runs into chicanery and manipulation, more murders, and eventually a shoot-out in the fountain plaza at downtown Tower City.

“Page-turner of the week… narrative comfort food… a nifty spin on a classic P.I. formula.” (People)

Excerpt: She sighed deeply and put her feet down on the floor, preparing to rise. “Milan, I don’t think we can salvage this evening, do you? Maybe it’d be better if I just headed home.”

The skin on the back of my hands prickled. I wanted to tell her not to go, to stay and talk this out, whatever the hell this was. But I didn’t. “Whatever you’re comfortable with,” I said. It came out colder than I had intended.

She got up, went to the guest closet by the front door and shrugged into her coat. “I was kind of expecting you to beg me to stay.”

“Begging isn’t my thing, Connie.”

She blinked once. Her eyes were really dark now, like a pond in late gray winter. She reached out and put a cool hand on the side of my warm face. “I know,” she said.

Publisher: Gray & Company (2006)

Pages: 271

Original Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (2000)