Cleveland private investigator, Slovenian-American Milan Jacovich, gets a phone call from a wealthy advertising executive in the middle of the night, who asks him for a few hours of support and protection. But when Milan arrives at his home, there’s no answer at the door. The next morning, the ad mogul’s wife reports him missing and hires Milan to find him. Milan finds a lot more than that, including murder, influential politicians, and the most powerful hard guys in the Cleveland mob.

“Roberts handles the private-eye format with aplomb and takes full advantage of his Cleveland scene… Best of all is his Slovenian sleuth, vulnerable and fallible, whom we are likely (and would like) to see more of.” (San Diego Union)

Excerpt: I had my keys out of my pocket when I noticed that my two left tires, the ones exposed to the roadway, were flat. I bent down to examine them, noting they had been slashed with a sharp blade, and the bending saved my life, because a rifle cracked from the copse of dogwood across the river and a bullet whizzed past my ear, sounding very much like one of Hitler’s buzz bombs. It smacked into the stand of birch behind me, taking a fearsome bite out of one of the trees.

Publisher: Gray & Company (2005)

Pages: 215

Original Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (1988)