About the Book

Martha Jane Buckner, crime reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, gets caught in a crossfire between criminal gangs in St. Louis. It's 1929, and with Prohibition going strong, there's a lot of money to be made in illegal booze. Her best source is killed and Marty almost dies in a hail of buckshot.

She turns for help to her friend Elroy Dutton, gambler and speakeasy owner in her old hometown of Corinth, Missouri. Her brother, Corinth police chief James Bolivar Buckner, finds out and follows Dutton to St. Louis. Working with St. Louis private detective Alonso Harris, Buckner and Dutton have to protect Marty, figure out who's trying to kill her, and stop them.

Meanwhile, a wealthy young man is found in Corinth, dead of alcohol poisoning. With Buckner in the city, Corinth officers James Shotwell and Michael Mullen work to learn the young man's identity, and backtrack him to find out why he ended up dead in an alley in Corinth.