by Les Roberts
First published 1988
Milan Jacovich gets a strange midnight call from advertising executive Richard Amber. The job sounds simple: twelve hours of bodyguard work for a thousand dollars. Milan drives to Amber's house in the wealthy suburb of Pepper Pike, but nobody answers the door. The next morning, Amber's wife shows up at Milan's office with a different problem. Her husband has vanished. Milan's search takes him from Cleveland's exclusive country clubs to its roughest neighborhoods. He encounters mob boss Don Giancarlo D'Allessandro and his dangerous nephew Victor Gaimari. The case even puts him in contact with Ohio's governor. Milan nearly loses his life at a private country club where his Slovenian American background makes him an outsider. This former cop and Vietnam veteran with a master's degree navigates between Cleveland's power brokers and street criminals. He sustains himself on klobasa sandwiches and Stroh's beer while trying to solve what started as a simple missing person case.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective, action
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, investigation
Setting: Cleveland, Ohio, Pepper Pike
Period: Midnight, Vietnam War
228 pages · Paperback · Gray and Company, Publishers