The Concrete Inquisition

A cop gets shot. . . He loses his left eye. He loses his job. And that's after he loses his wife. So what's he going to do? Michael "Doc" Kildare, former undercover narc, sues the government. Claims one-third of the $45 million recovered in the drug raid he led. Armando Guzman, the drug lord who lost the money, doesn't like that. He puts out a contract on Doc's life. Doc's former boss, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, also takes exception. He says the confiscated drug money is his. So when he learns of Guzman's contract, he quietly passes the word: Nobody wearing a CPD star is to help Doc in any way. But that's not all. An old friend of Doc's asks a favor. Help find her son. The boy is 17 years old, but mentally handicapped. Doc investigates and soon learns there might be a serial killer working his neighborhood. Oh, yeah. Doc's ex-wife? She's back. He tells himself that she's only after the millions that might be coming his way. Thing is, he doesn't know if that's a good enough reason to turn her away. Hitmen to the right, a maniac to the left, and a redheaded distraction. Nobody ever said retirement would be easy.

Literature & Fiction

Flynn, Joseph

Contemporary

Stray Dog Press

Two men on the run ... Newspaperman Dan Cameron gets a cool old typewriter for his 40th birthday. It once belonged to Ben Hecht, who used it to write the movie "Notorious." Dan uses it to write a best-seller. Then the Hecht estate says the typewriter was stolen and demands its return. As his lawyers fight in court, Dan and his wife, Erin, take off so he can get at least one more book out of the machine. Bank robber Fetch McDonald is three weeks away from parole when his father brings bad news. Fetch's ex-wife, Verene, who still holds title to his heart, is going to remarry - in two weeks. One week before Fetch's release. With the help of his cousin, Lerome, Fetch breaks out. But the car Lerome has stolen breaks down. Right outside of Dan and Erin's cabin in the woods. The two desperados steal the Camerons' SUV. And Lerome, a quirky sort, steals Dan's typewriter and the only copy of his new novel. Not long after that Fetch and an unlikely accomplice are duplicating the crimes described in Dan's novel. Dan and Erin have no choice but to join in the manhunt. If the court rules against Dan, what's he going to say? An escaped convict stole the typewriter? Yeah, right. Besides, Dan thinks there's a new book in tracking down the thieves.

Hot Type

Humor & Satire

SPRING VISITS : Photographs from Viet Nam

Unrau, Don

A Sky That Is Never the Same

Hahn, S.C.

Always a good sport, Jim McGill, the first private-eye to live in the White House, agrees to accompany his wife, the president, to London to be her escort at a dinner given by the queen-yes, the one who lives in Buckingham Palace. Problem is, he'll have a week in England beforehand, while the president attends a G8 meeting, with nothing to do. Then a client comes to McGill, the daughter of a former Chicago cop McGill knew but didn't like when he was a captain on the CPD. McGill's former colleague went to Paris to scatter the ashes of his late, French-born wife in the Seine. While tending to that solemn obligation, the former cop managed to get into a brawl with and kill France's national sports hero. The guy from Chicago claims he was only saving a blonde woman from being beaten by the Frenchman, as French law actually required him to do. Only problem is, the blonde has disappeared. The former cop's daughter asks McGill to find the woman and save her father. Beats glad-handing the locals in nearby London, he decides. He just has to wrap up the case in time to get to dinner with the president and the queen. ForeWord Magazine called The President's Henchman "marvelously entertaining." Its sequel, The Hangman's Companion, is even more fun. With a French accent.

The Hangman's Companion

Genre Fiction

Round Robin Phinney ... She's 230 pounds of bad attitude. She dishes out sandwiches and insults to the customers at Screaming Mimi's deli. She takes a dim view of people in general and men in particular. Her home is her sanctuary. She has an apartment upstairs. Downstairs, she's created a private park, lushly landscaped, dotted with ponds, furnished with two Chicago Park District benches. Manfred Welk is what Charles Atlas would have looked like if he'd been serious about lifting weights. A former Olympic powerlifter for East Germany, his When cold weather hits and Robin's furnace goes out, the plants in her park start to die. Worse, she has no money  for repairs - but she does have a small vacant apartment in her basement. Something she might swap for the services of a live-in handyman. After interviewing a number of prospective fix-it people, Robin finds, to her great horror, the best choice is a giant German with CIA connections. That's bad enough, but the guy turns out to have a kid, a blue-haired prepubescent brat named Bianca who's been raised in a brothel. Robin, Manfred and Bianca all have their demons to cast out. You'll have a grand time watching as they do.

Round Robin

Ron Ketchum saw his share of the dark side of life as a cop in Los Angeles. Then he left L.A. to become the chief of police in the Sierra Nevada resort town of Goldstrike. One sunny morning in the mountains, though, he comes upon a crime unlike anything he's ever seen before. He finds the body of an African American man nailed to a tree. The victim is a highly respected minister, and his father is the nationally known televangelist Jimmy Thunder. Ron, on the other hand, has described himself in court as a recovering bigot. Goldstrike's mayor for life and movie icon, Clay Steadman, wants Ron to catch the killer fast. Adding to the pressure, the victim's grandmother comes to town. She tells the media mob that has descended on Goldstrike that God will curse the town until the killer is caught. That's when a rogue mountain lion begins attacking people. At first, the attacks happen on the wilderness outskirts of Goldstrike. Then the predator moves into town, leaping a fence into a family's backyard. Finally, it turns the tables on one of the hunters sent out to bring it down. Looking for a killer, hunting a lion and defending his own integrity - makes being a cop in L.A. seem like the good old days.

Nailed

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Somebody in Washington is updating Shakespeare. The first thing he wants to do is kill all the lobbyists. Knocking off three of them in consecutive weeks, he's off to a fast start. On the lapel of each victim, the killer leaves a pin that, arguably, resembles Porky Pig. The Metro police are on the case when Putnam Shady steps forward and identifies the third victim as a friend. Authority averse, Putnam gives the cops only bare bones information - but he tells Margaret "Sweetie" Sweeney that he thinks he will be the next victim. The reason, he explains, is quite simple. There are two plans afoot to seize control of the federal government. At the center of one plan is the speaker of the House of Representatives. The group behind the other plan consisted of Putnam and his three dead colleagues. Sweetie vows to protect Putnam. She enlists Jim McGill, the president's henchman, to find out who is behind the murders. But then McGill's whole world is turned upside down. His son, Kenny, is diagnosed with leukemia. President Patricia Grant's life is only slightly less tumultuous. Her enemies force her to leave the Republican Party. Erna Godfrey implicates her husband, Reverend Burke Godfrey, in the killing of Patti's first husband, Andrew Hudson Grant. But Reverend Godfrey refuses to go down without a fight. Amidst the turmoil, Welborn Yates and Kira Fahey schedule their marriage - and inevitably have to deal with wedding crashers.

The K Street Killer

The Last Ballot Cast is a story so big it has to be told in two parts. This is Part 1. With his son and his wife, the president of the United States, both near death, Jim McGill makes a choice that may save, or lose, both of them. As McGill makes his agonizing decision, an old nemesis, Dr. Damon Todd, escapes from CIA custody. Breaking out with Todd are two former covert operatives whose past is so bloody the Agency had to retire them. Now, all three are targeting McGill. In Patti's absence, Acting President Wyman has to find a way to bring Reverend Burke Godfrey to justice without causing a massacre. Captain Welborn Yates draws a bead on the car thief who killed his best friends and travels to the Caribbean to set up an ambush. All that is but the preface for the dirtiest, three-candidate presidential election in the country's history.When all is said and done, every big question is answered, including one that concerns us all in an election year: Does one person's vote matter?

Part 1: The Last Ballot Cast

The Last Ballot Cast is a story so big it has to be told in two parts. This is Part 2. With his son and his wife, the president of the United States, both near death, Jim McGill makes a choice that may save, or lose, both of them. As McGill makes his agonizing decision, an old nemesis, Dr. Damon Todd, escapes from CIA custody. Breaking out with Todd are two former covert operatives whose past is so bloody the Agency had to retire them. Now, all three are targeting McGill. In Patti's absence, Acting President Wyman has to find a way to bring Reverend Burke Godfrey to justice without causing a massacre. Captain Welborn Yates draws a bead on the car thief who killed his best friends and travels to the Caribbean to set up an ambush. All that is but the preface for the dirtiest, three-candidate presidential election in the country's history.When all is said and done, every big question is answered, including one that concerns us all in an election year: Does one person's vote matter?

Part 2: The Last Ballot Cast

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