Pardon My Body

From the moment Dale’s headlights hit the nyloned legs of lovely Julia Casson on that old Connecticut highway, trouble moved right in on him—and stayed there.

A quiet steak dinner at the Golden Peacock Inn looked like an easy exit—until a Wall Street partner turned up dead at a corner table. Then a bullet-riddled bookie lands squarely in Dale’s bedroom closet, courtesy of a triggerman who promises Bogard is next.

Every lead runs through crooked midwestern cops, a decadent racketeer with five grand to buy silence, and a trail of blackmail stretching back twenty years. Homicide lieutenant Desmond O’Cassidy tells him to drop the scent, but walking away was never on the cards.

Gunmen, straight coppers and crooked coppers, luscious bedtime lovelies and the fabulous mystery of the Task Force dagger deaths…Bogard cracks his way through it all to the most breathless showdown ever.

Hard-Boiled Mystery: Dale Bogard traded his reporter’s press card for a typewriter, but dodging syndicate bullets requires a Luger and heavy doses of black coffee.Femme Fatale: From a chic secretary tossed onto a muddy highway to a sultry former burlesque dancer residing in a Sands Point mansion, glamorous women keep crossing Dale’s line of fire.Deadly Conspiracy: A set of combat daggers ties Wall Street textile fortunes to Mike Hannigan’s sawdust-floored saloon and a crooked police captain seven hundred miles away.Race Against Time: With an assassin brandishing a .22 target pistol and headquarters closing in, Bogard has to piece together an old extortion racket before another body drops.