THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
ABOUT THE MEN DYING AROUND HER...
In his sixth labyrinthine hard-boiled puzzler, NYC private eye Joey Mancuso finds himself neck-deep in a maze of a murder mystery—the kind that weaves through military secrets and international espionage—at the center of which is the woman he loves.
Despite a recent drop in New York City’s crime rate, the PI business is booming for acutely-astute investigator Joey Mancuso and his partner-in-solving-crime Father Dominic O’Brian (who happens to be his half-brother). So it’s no surprise when Mancuso is called to the scene of a particularly gruesome and utterly confounding Lower Manhattan murder.
The vic, Oscar Stanton, was gunned down in Washington Square Park in broad daylight, just after lunch. A quick and dirty ID reveals the real Oscar Stanton was working in cybersecurities for the DOD—and, perhaps unsurprisingly, was killed in Afghanistan.
And since Mancuso’s antics tend to weave a winding yarn as intricately-connected as a satisfying Sherlock Holmes story, it’s even less surprising that the fake Stanton’s lunch date was recently tailed by FBI agent Marcy Martinez (who happens to be Mancuso’s wife).
When crucial evidence from the scene is found in Marcy’s car—and Marcy’s hands test positive for gunshot residue—Mancuso knows she’s been framed.
The signs point to her partner, Thomas Lyons. After all, she has a history of shall we say unreliable partners (i.e. murderous psychopaths). But Lyons has mysteriously gone awol—until his body is found stuffed in a janitor’s closet at a subway station.