Deuce Mora’s one tough cookie: a female sleuth with a conscience and an attitude; fiery, tough, athletic, a dirty fighter when she has to be. In Jean Heller’s first mystery featuring the scrappy newspaper columnist, Deuce finds out in short order that if you mess with organized crime, you have to be tough—and you’d better be as much detective as reporter. When she walks into a seedy neighborhood bar in a suburb of Chicago—all six feet of her, topped with auburn curls—she’s searching for a human-interest story. What she finds is Vinnie Colangelo, an aging mobster living on bad beer, cheap bourbon, and regret for the life he wasted.

Vinnie hints at secrets much bigger than his rap sheet should entitle him to, and Deuce immediately discovers that somebody’s willing to kill to keep those secrets buried. She uncovers a series of crimes committed over nearly six decades, and, as her human-interest story morphs into a hard-boiled, action-packed mystery, she finds herself dead center in a storm of threats and reprisals from the mob.

It’s not enough that the mob’s after her, and corrupt government is concealing the evidence that would explain why, even her own editors, frightened of lawsuits and losing subscribers, want her off the story.

Fortunately, she has many allies: a network of loyal co-workers and contacts, even an ardent new admirer. But which ones can she trust? At least one of them, she suspects, is hiding a secret— corruption? Murder? The veteran reporter knows: if you’re talking Chicago crime scene—it’s probably both.