Maxwell Street Blues — Marc Krulewitch

Readers of Robert Crais's Elvis Cole mysteries will love Jules Landau, a college man turned private eye on the Windy City's mean streets -- a virtual school of hard knocks where graduation means just staying alive.

Chicago runs in Jules Landau's veins. So does the blood of crooks. Now Jules is going legit as a private eye, stalking bail jumpers and cheating spouses -- until he gets his first big case. Unfortunately, the client is his ex-con father, and the job is finding the killer of a man whom Jules loved like family. Why did someone put two bullets in the head of gentle bookkeeper Charles Snook? Jules is determined to find out, even if the search takes him to perilous places he never wanted to go.

Snooky, as he was affectionately known, had a knack for turning dirty dollars clean, with clients ranging from humble shop owners to sharp-dressed mobsters. As Jules retraces Snooky's last days, he crosses paths with a way-too-eager detective, a gorgeous and perplexing tattoo artist, a silver-haired university administrator with a kinky side, and a crusading journalist. Exposing one dirty secret after another, the PI is on a dangerous learning curve. And, at the top of that curve, a killer readies to strike again.