by James Garner
First published 2014
Rex Koko works as a private detective in Top Town, a rundown neighborhood where circus performers scrape by on the margins of respectable society. Fire eaters work for drinking money while fortune tellers peddle prophecies and occasional favors. Daredevils push their luck until it runs out. When someone begs Rex to track down an escaped lion, the job seems straightforward enough. The beast destroys his expensive shoe during the capture, leaving Rex determined to recover the cost of his ruined footwear. This simple quest for reimbursement pulls him into a web of corrupt doctors dealing drugs, mesmerizing alligator trainers, South American shamans, and self righteous reformers bent on destroying Top Town itself. Danger thickens around Rex like carnival smoke mixed with liquor and terror. The investigation threatens everyone Rex knows in this place where broken dreams and desperate schemes collide nightly under the big top lights.
Genres: mystery, thriller, detective
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Top Town
Period: 20th-century
232 pages · Paperback · CreateSpace
Content warnings: drug-use, violence