Description:

**In his final case, Brock investigates the murder of his troubled college roommate. ** Maybe Mike Gregory was too smart for football. When he and Brock Callahan roomed together at Stanford University, Mike was a second-stringer with the skill to go pro. But he squandered his talent and drifted after college, briefly working as a stockbroker before descending down society's ladder, becoming a drunk, then an addict, and finally a snitch. The police aren't surprised when they find him in Santa Monica, face blown off with a sawed-off shotgun, but Brock is puzzled. Even at his lowest, Mike was too smart to go out like that. Though he's been retired for years, Brock's investigative instincts kick in at Mike's funeral. As he plumbs the depths of his old friend's broken life, he uncovers a toxic cocktail of cultists, mobsters, and corrupt law enforcement. Caught in the middle, this unlucky snitch had nowhere to turn. ** ### Review “A legend in his own time.” —Bill Pronzini, creator of the Nameless Detective series “[Gault] knows that writing well is the best revenge.” —Ross MacDonald “[Gault] can *write*, never badly and sometimes like an angel.” —Fredric Brown, author of *The Fabulous Clipjoint* ### About the Author William Campbell Gault (1910–1995) was a critically acclaimed pulp novelist. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he took seven years to graduate from high school. Though he was part of a juvenile gang, he wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl’s name lest one of his friends find it. He sold his first story in 1936, and built a great career writing for pulps like *Paris Nights*, *Scarlet Adventures*, and the infamous *Black Mask*. In 1939, Gault quit his job and started writing fulltime. When the success of his pulps began to fade in the 1950s, Gault turned to longer fiction, winning an Edgar Award for his first mystery, *Don’t Cry for Me* (1952), which he wrote in twenty-eight days. He created private detectives Brock Callahan and Joe Puma, and also wrote juvenile sports books like *Cut-Rate Quarterback* (1977) and *Wild Willie, Wide Receiver* (1974). His final novel was *Dead Pigeon* (1992), a Brock Callahan mystery.