Jason Palmer loved being a soldier. But after returning home from Iraq with an “other than honorable” discharge, he’s finding rebuilding his life the toughest battle yet. Elena Cruz is a talented cop, the first woman to make Chicago ’s prestigious Gang Intelligence Unit. She’s ready for anything the job can throw at her. Until Jason’s brother, a prominent community activist, is murdered in front of his own son. Now, stalked by brutal men with a shadowy agenda, Jason and Elena must unravel a conspiracy stretching from the darkest alleys of the ghetto to the manicured lawns of the city’s power brokers. In a world where corruption and violence are simply the cost of doing business, two damaged people are all that stand between an innocent child – and the killers who will stop at nothing to find him.
A family, and the security to enjoy it: that’s all Tom and Anna Reed ever wanted. But years of infertility treatments, including four failed attempts at in-vitro fertilization, have left them with neither. The emotional and financial costs are straining their marriage and endangering their dreams. So when their downstairs tenant – a recluse whose promptly delivered cashier’s checks were barely keeping them afloat – dies in his sleep, the $400,000 they find stashed in his kitchen seems like fate. More than fate: a chance for everything they’ve dreamed of for so long. A fairy-tale ending.But Tom and Anna soon realize that fairy tales never come cheap. Because their tenant wasn’t a hermit who squirreled away his pennies. He was a criminal who double-crossed some of the most dangerous men in Chicago. Men who won’t stop until they get revenge, no matter where they find it.
Marcus Sakey, 'the new reigning prince of crime fiction' (Chicago Tribune) is the most acclaimed new thriller writer in recent memory. In his next taut, propulsive novel, four friends from the old neighborhood have dreams of a better life. And they've worked hard for it. A bartender. A failing stock broker. A hotel doorman. A travel agent. In a world where CEOs steal millions while their employees worry about their next paycheck, where the few dollars any of them have saved are held hostage to the whims of billionaires a world away, the honest approach got these four nowhere.
Danny Carter thought he was safe in his new life until his old one came looking for him. In the working-class Irish neighborhood of Chicago where he grew up, you were only as strong as the reputation you built. Danny and his best friend Evan built theirs robbing pawn shops and liquor stores, living the reckless lives that their blue-collar parents had strived so hard to avoid for them.
