Description
Bootleggers, cops, and corruption collide along the Detroit River, where Jack McCloskey smuggles his illegal liquor, in this Prohibition-era mystery.
The town of Ford — the Border Cities’ knot of factories, machine shops, and depots wedged between respectable Walkerville and residential Riverside — is quickly becoming the main junction in the trafficking of illegal liquor. When Jack McCloskey tries to regain his lost bootlegging territory, he and his gang are met with some resistance from both labour and management.
McCloskey’s twice-postponed honeymoon with Vera Maude in Niagara Falls is cut short when a figure from his past resurfaces, and Pearl Shipley, entertainment manager at his nightclub, finds out the hard way that a few of her chorus girls have been putting in overtime at a certain downtown bawdy house. Meanwhile, Detective Campbell and Dr. Laforet are trying to figure out if a string of recent deaths in Ford are gang-related or industrial sabotage.
Contributor Notes
Michael Januska was born in Windsor and has worked with books his whole life, both as a bookseller and for several book publishers. Stories from the Border City Blues series have won two consecutive Scene of the Crime short story prizes. He lives in Toronto.
Editorial Review
Januska has a real knack for character-building and for giving his books a realistic feel; he nails the Prohibition ambience, capturing both the era's freewheeling adventure and its violent underside.
— Booklist, for Prospect Avenue
