Ex-cop Jack Kiley is bored, and his work as a PI, tailing cheating spouses and investigating insurance claims, offers little to be excited about. That is, until the day he’s asked to meet with Daniel Pike, a rare book dealer who’s received an exclusive offer on a suspicious but intriguing item: an unpublished pulp crime novel by a minor but highly collectable Modernist poet. If Kiley can determine the origin of the text, Pike can verify its authenticity. To do so will mean navigating the tangled threads of jealousy and deceit surrounding the poet’s estate, and solving a mystery with roots reaching back to the Bohemian Soho of mid-twentieth century London—all things that Kiley is capable of doing. But as the would-be seller grows increasingly impatient, threatening to put the manuscript up for auction, it becomes clear that the offer has an expiration date, and he must rush to discover the truth before it’s too late.

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