Note: Details of the first book in this series, The Detroit Electric Scheme, are discussed in both Motor City Shakedown and, to an extent, this review of it.
I had my life back. This time I wouldn’t waste it. – Will Anderson
Detroit, 1911. When we last saw Will Anderson, heir apparent to the Detroit Electric car company, he and his then fiancée, Elizabeth Hume, had barely survived a nasty encounter with crime boss Vito Adamo.
Will’s best friend did not survive, and the guilt Will feels over his friend’s murder, as well as the terrible pain he suffers as a result of his mangled right hand, have driven Will to morphine addiction to dull his demons.
Determined to set things right and avenge his friend, Will begins with Adamo’s driver, intending to work his way up the criminal ladder to the boss. Unfortunately for Will someone beats him to the punch, and it’s a nearly decapitated body he finds upon entering the driver’s apartment.
Now Will’s a suspect in a murder he didn’t commit, and his quest to find the real killer starts him down a path that ends smack dab in the middle of an all-out mob war.
Will unexpectedly gets helped out of his police jam by the Gianolla crime family, who promptly turn around and use that leverage to squeeze Will into being their point man for the Teamsters’ entry into Detroit Electric. With the lives of Elizabeth and his family at stake, Will finds that hard times make for strange bedfellows as he begins to wonder if the enemy of his enemy – Vito Adamo – may actually be, well, if not his friend then at least a potential ally. (more…)
It happens far too often now. A child — sometimes a baby, often an adolescent — suddenly disappears. It hits the local news. Then goes national. Then Nancy Grace is spouting theories and pointing fingers. Overnight, everyone knows the child’s name. They see the same family-selected photo printed in their newspapers and flashed on their TV screens. Time passes — be it days, weeks or months — and the child is found. Sometimes the news is happy. Usually, it isn’t. And then the names, the photographs, the incident itself fade from memory.
