Lucky Bones

by Michael Wiley

Overview

A case of stolen shoes leads maverick Chicago PI Sam Kelson into something far darker and deeper in the second of this hardhitting crime noir series.

"My boyfriend's been stealing my Jimmy Choos." Genevieve Bower has hired private investigator Sam Kelson to recover her stolen shoes from her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. The problem is that no one's seen Genevieve's boyfriend for the past two weeks.

Events take a disturbing twist when, in his search for the shoes, Kelson comes across a body, shot in the head. A clear-cut case of suicide ― or is it? Has Kelson's client been wholly honest with him? What is this case really about?

At the same time, an explosion rips through one of the city's public libraries, leaving a friend's nephew critically injured. Could there be a connection? If there is, Kelson's determined to find it. But Kelson's not like other investigators. Taking a bullet in the brain during his former career as a Chicago cop, he suffers from disinhibition: he cannot keep silent or tell lies when questioned ― and his involuntary outspokenness is about to lead him into dangerous waters...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727889829
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Series:	A Sam Kelson mystery , #2
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.98(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael Wiley was brought up in Chicago, and now teaches literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. As well as the Sam Kelson series, he is the Shamus Award-winning author of the Chicago-based Joe Kozmarski PI series, the Daniel Turner and Franky Dast series. His Franky Dast thriller, Monument Road, was nominated for the 2018 Shamus Best PI Novel Award.

Editorial Reviews

2020-05-18
A wacko theft launches a second case for a private eye who just can’t shut up.

The shot that retired Sam Kelson from the Chicago PD in Trouble in Mind (2020) left him unable to lie or filter his thoughts, or sometimes even recognize himself in the mirror. Despite these disabilities, attractive business owner Genevieve Bower thinks he’s the one to recover all the knockoff Jimmy Choos that 1980s-music DJ Jeremy Oliver ended their nine-day fling by walking off with. (The client might have thought twice if she’d seen what Kelson did the moment their initial meeting ended.) Meanwhile, one-armed bookkeeper Marty LeCoeur, Kelson’s old friend, is being pressed by the brain trust at G&G Private Equity—wealthy Harold Crane, his cold-eyed daughter, Sylvia, and Chip Voudreaux—to do some creative accounting that will leave them even wealthier. Marty won’t do it, but his nephew Neto, a young hacker who already has a record, is willing. Bad mistake. Moments before Neto completes the transaction, a bomb smuggled into the library where he’s working kills homeless Afghan War vet Victor Almonte and Amy Runeski, an unemployed mother suing for divorce, and sends Neto to the hospital with a dire diagnosis. Against every rule but that of formula fiction, the two cases turn out to be connected through a hush-hush thumb drive that was the real prize stolen from Kelson’s client. Can he avoid telling the many supporting crooks who press him for information exactly how much he knows for long enough for them to wipe each other out?

Wiley spins a florid plot as disinhibited, and ultimately as exhausting to deal with, as his hero.

Kirkus Reviews