Detroit, 1911. Seven months have passed since Will Anderson’s friend Wesley McRae was brutally murdered and Will and the woman he loves, Elizabeth Hume, barely escaped with their lives. Will’s hand, horribly disfigured from the sulfuric acid he used to help save them, causes him constant pain, forcing him into a morphine addiction. He lives for nothing except revenge against the people who contributed to Wesley’s murder—first among them crime boss Vito Adamo. When Will stumbles upon the bloody body of Adamo’s driver, he knows he’ll be a suspect, particularly since he was spotted outside the dead man’s apartment that same night. He sets out to find the killer, and the trail leads him to a vast conspiracy in an underworld populated by gangsters, union organizers, crooked cops, and lawyers. Worse, it places him directly in the middle of Detroit's first mob war. The Teamsters want a piece of Will’s father’s car company, Detroit Electric, and the Gianolla gang is there to be sure they get it. To save their families, Will and his ex-fiancée Elizabeth Hume enlist the help of Detroit Police Detective Riordan, the teenage members of what will one day be known as the Purple Gang, and Vito Adamo himself. They careen from one danger to the next, surviving shootouts, kidnappings, and police brutality, while barreling toward a devastating climax readers won’t soon forget.
My thoughts
Will Anderson goes to confront Carlo Moretti, a driver for a local mob boss, and instead finds him dead with his throat slit. The police believe that Will killed him in retaliation for the murder of his friend some seven months prior. After being released from prison when another person confesses, Will becomes entangled in the war between the Adamo and Gianolla gangs.
Sounds like something you’d read about in the papers, yet this takes place in Detroit in the year 1911. D.E. Johnson combines historical facts with his fiction to make a captivating thriller that takes us back to a different era. Not only were the Adamo and Gianolla families real, but also intertwined into the story are Henry and Edsel Ford and the labor movement of that time.
Johnson writes any easy flowing story that is fast moving and surprising. The interaction between the fictional and real characters was a treat. Two thumbs up!
Dan's Contests
Dan's got two contests going on his website (not me, but the author). One is for reviewers (now that could be me) - you can enter for a chance to be a character in his next book, Detroit Breakdown!
The other is for anybody to win an autographed copy of Motor City Shakedown.
Go to his website to learn more and a chance to win.
1 comments:
Glad to see you give this one two thumbs up! Thanks for being on the tour!
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