Owing a favor to mobster Victor Gaimari, Milan Jacovich agrees to play watchdog over a dowdy housewife running for mayor in a suburban city in Lake County. But the wife of the incumbent, Gayton True, is victimized by a hit-and-run driver on the street just outside Cleveland’s Tower City—and it’s obvious to Milan now that more is at stake than the mayor’s chair in a quiet suburban city hall. A horrendous fistfight during a blizzard will make you remember this one for a long time.

“Packed with unusual heroes, villains, and political twists and turns…a mystery that defies predictability.” (Midwest Book Review)

Excerpt: I owed Victor Gaimari a favor. You might think I’d be picking up his dry cleaning or driving him to the airport or taking his homely visiting cousin to dinner and a show. But it wasn’t that kind of favor. Victor is the favorite nephew and heir apparent of Giancarlo D’Allessandro and number two man in the D’Allessandro family, which pretty much pulls all the strings of organized crime in northern Ohio. And families being what they are, especially that kind of family, when you owe Victor you owe the old man, too. It’s the sort of debt you don’t take lightly.

Publisher: Gray & Company (2005)

Pages: 282

Original Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (1994)