Death on a Budget — Michael W. Sherer

There's nothing like having kids to change your outlook on life. A toddler has Chicago freelance writer Emerson Ward thinking twice about his habit of tilting at windmills and riding a white charger to people's rescue. It's no wonder he turns down his friend Brandt's pleas to find out why a banker they both knew was shotgunned to death in the park near Montrose Harbor.

But when the love of Emerson's life leaves for Seattle with their daughter to care for her ailing mother, Emerson has no reason to turn down a cry for help from a childhood friend. It means climbing back in the saddle of his old GMC motor home and returning to the small town where he grew up and swore he'd never return to confront old demons, family, friends and foes he hasn't seen for 25 years.

Soon he's up to his eyeballs in a high-stakes commercial real estate scam and a decades-old family secret that threaten everything he holds dear. The deeper he digs, the less he likes what he learns, about his old hometown, the people in it, and even himself. When he links the dead banker to the real estate scam and a group of fundamentalist Muslim businessmen raising funds for terrorists, the FBI steps in to let him know he stands to lose even more -- his life.