When a witness's son is kidnapped, Chicago's gangland erupts into chaos.

Once a college football star, Bill Hanrahan has had a hard time of it ever since his bad knees kept him out of the pros. He became a homicide detective with the unfortunate reputation of losing witnesses and loving the bottle. Now Hanrahan is off the sauce, and working a job that should be straightforward: He's guarding a mob informant's ex-wife and teenage son while they tour colleges. Everything is fine until the last night of their trip. At three in the morning, Hanrahan hears shots from their motel room. By the time he breaks down the door, it's too late. The woman is dead, the boy has been kidnapped, and Hanrahan wants a drink more than he ever has before.

The mob issues a simple instruction to the informant: Kill yourself and your son lives. Hanrahan and his partner, Abe Lieberman, tear the city apart in search of the kid, hoping against hope that for once they will be able to keep both witnesses alive.

About the Author:

Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema - two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life's work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood's Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life.
Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as "the anti-Philip Marlowe." In 1981's Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009.

Review quote:

"Kaminsky stands out as a subtle historian, unobtrusively but entertainingly weaving into the story itself what people were wearing, eating, driving, and listening to on the radio. A page-turning romp." - Booklist.

"For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun . . . The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek." - Publishers Weekly.

"Marvelously entertaining." - Newsday.

"Makes the totally wacky possible . . . Peters [is] an unblemished delight." - Washington Post.

"The Ed McBain of Mother Russia." - Kirkus Reviews.

**

### Amazon.com Review

Veteran Chicago detective Abe Lieberman has things on his mind. His daughter's in from L.A., having left her husband. In addition, a small-time Korean gangster who lost his livelihood thanks to Abe has come to kill him--again.

> "You come near here again, you're dead. I think it's better to be alive than dead, but you make up your own mind."
>
> "I can go?" Kim asked warily.
>
> "I wish you would. I've got an important phone call to make."
>
> Kim rose, confused. "You won't even arrest me?"
>
> "No."
>
> Lieberman's foot was driving him crazy. He had to scratch it, and he did.
>
> "So, more dishonor from the Jew devil," Kim said.
>
> "You get your dialogue from very bad Hong Kong movies," Lieberman said. "You need a slightly higher grade of culture. You ever see *Mildred Pierce*?"

Bill Hanrahan, a pro lineman would-have-been thanks to bad knees, is Abe's longtime partner (cops call them the Rabbi and the Priest) and he, too, has issues. A softball assignment guarding the ex-wife and son of mob-accountant-about-to-sing Mickey Gornitz has just gone south; the woman's been murdered and the boy snatched. It's not the first time a woman's been killed while in Hanrahan's care, although it is the first since he's been sober. The kidnapper's demand to Gornitz--an unwelcome confidant of Abe's--is simple: kill yourself and the boy lives. An untenable situation for all, the resolution of which plumbs the vagaries of philosophy and morality.

Kaminsky has as sure a hand (from character development and dialogue to plot and pacing) as you'll find in any police procedural, and he's got more successful series running than many authors have successful novels. To the wonderful Lieberman series, add his contemporary Russian detective, Porfiry Rostnikov (star of 2000's *Fall of a Cosmonaut*); his 1940s Hollywood PI, Toby Peters (1991's *Poor Butterfly*), and his newest, Sarasota process server-cum-people locator, Lew Fonesca (1999's *Vengeance*). Do yourself a favor and read them all. *--Michael Hudson*

### From Publishers Weekly

Versatile, prolific and reliable, Kaminsky seldom disappoints, whether spinning a tale about his Russian policeman (Porfiry Rostnikov), private eye to the stars (Toby Peters) or Chicago policeman Abe Lieberman. Here Lieberman and his Irish partner, Bill Hanrahan, known to colleagues as "the Rabbi and the Priest," have to handle an onslaught of personal and professional crises. Hanrahan, a former football lineman who missed out on a pro career because of bad knees, is nearly suicidal over a blown assignment that resulted in a kidnapping and murder. Lieberman, a slight, 60ish career policeman, juggles a pair of bothersome cases and a pair of family crises on top of shouldering some of Hanrahan's burden as a partner should. Drawing on Chicago's cultural diversity, Kaminsky enriches the story with a range of Jewish, Irish-Catholic, Korean, African-American, Hispanic and other ethnic characters. In his world-weary, wise and compassionate way, Lieberman uses every tool at his command, from common sense to favors traded as readily with a gang leader as with another cop. Crimes are not so much solved as resolved. And the partnerships Lieberman has forged with his compatriotsDbe they relatives, police officers, suspects or citizensDmake the resolutions and the process of achieving them a joy to follow. (Dec.)
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