Smoke and Bourbon: A Jack Delaney Novella

LOS ANGELES. 1940s. THE WAR IS OVER. THE BLOODSHED ISN'T.Jack Delaney came home from the Pacific with a badge, a bottle, and a war he can't leave behind. Now he's a homicide detective in a city where the powerful decide which crimes get solved and which ones disappear.The Cold Drawer is where those cases go to die. Unsolved murders. Missing persons. Evidence that could bring down the wrong people. Once a file lands there, the department acts as if it never existed.Delaney has spent years surviving by signing off on the lies that keep the department running. Under Lieutenant Briggs, it's the price of keeping his job. Then his partner, Sal, starts asking questions about a supposed suicide tied to Hollywood studio money.The case was buried for a reason. Follow the kickbacks far enough and the trail leads into the mob, the studios, and the people who own the cops meant to protect the public.Delaney knows what happens to detectives who refuse to play along. But with his wartime trauma closing in and his own signature on the cover-up, walking away may be the one thing he can't afford to do.A hard-boiled detective novella of postwar Los Angeles, Hollywood corruption, and a cop running out of ways to live with himself.For readers of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James Ellroy.