Part of Mario Balzic Detective Mystery, book 4
First published 1975
Armand "Fat Manny" Manditti arrives at the emergency room with stab wounds, carried in by his brother Tullio the Tub. When Chief Balzic tries to get answers about what happened, Tullio refuses to talk. The silence tells Balzic everything he needs to know. The Manditti brothers plan to handle this themselves, which means someone else will end up bleeding or dead. Balzic knows the streets of Rocksburg well enough to see where this leads. He has to move fast to prevent the cycle of revenge from claiming more victims. The chief finds himself racing against time and family loyalty, trying to keep his small Pennsylvania town from erupting into violence. This is police work at its grittiest, where preventing crime means understanding the unspoken codes that govern people's lives.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-allies, race-against-time
Setting: Rocksburg, Pennsylvania
Period: contemporary
185 pages · Hardcover · Saturday Review Press
Content warnings: violence