First published 2025
Hicks McTaggart trades strikebreaking for private investigation in Depression-era Milwaukee. The former enforcer thinks he has found steady work until his boss assigns him what looks like simple missing person case. A wealthy cheese heiress has disappeared, and Hicks must track her down and bring her home. The job starts normally but quickly spirals beyond his control. Hicks finds himself forced aboard an ocean liner bound for Europe. He ends up stranded in landlocked Hungary, where he cannot read the signs or speak the language. The missing woman remains nowhere to be found. Hicks stumbles into a web of international intrigue involving Nazi operatives, Soviet spies, and British intelligence agents. He encounters jazz musicians, fortune tellers, motorcycle gangs, and countless other complications he never signed up for. History swirls around him in ways he cannot understand or navigate. The one consolation is that swing music is taking off, and Hicks happens to dance well. He faces the question of whether his lindy hop skills can somehow carry him back to Milwaukee and the familiar world he left behind, assuming that world still exists.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, mystery, thriller
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, reluctant-hero
Setting: Europe, Hungary, Milwaukee
Period: Depression-era
293 pages · Hardcover · Penguin Press