Boston-based jazz lover and alcoholic Elder Darrow owns a bar\u2014the Esposito\u2014but he\u2019s been slowly losing his passion for the business, and the drinking is starting to catch up with him. When Elder\u2019s best friend, Boston police detective Dan Burton, is gunned down in what appears to be a random liquor store robbery, Elder barely has time to grieve before mobster Mickey Barksdale shows up at the Esposito with a proposition. Mickey, who grew up with Burton, thinks the cop has been murdered, perhaps in a bid to send Mickey a message. He wants Elder, who sometimes assisted Burton with his cases, to take on the role of detective and ask the questions that Mickey can\u2019t ask. Elder refuses\u2014he doesn\u2019t want to believe Burton\u2019s death was anything but bad luck\u2014but when a masked man with a gun shows up at the bar to warn him off the investigation, he knows there\u2019s something bigger going on. More people start to die\u2014or at least disappear\u2014including Elder\u2019s ex-girlfriend, who\u2019s down from Oregon, and the Esposito\u2019s heroin-addicted chef (who happens to be Mickey\u2019s estranged daughter). Elder realizes that if he doesn\u2019t figure out what\u2019s going on, he may be next. But what, really, does he still have to live for? Cass perfectly captures Elder\u2019s cranky incompatibility with a swiftly changing Boston, the city he loves but increasingly fails to recognize. \u201cIt was nearly impossible to find an old-style lunch counter in Boston anymore,\u201d he laments. \u201cAll I ever needed was a couple of eggs over easy, wheat toast, and a decent cup of coffee. No chatty wait people with nose rings and tattoos, no cream cheese stuffed French toast.\u201d It\u2019s unclear whether this will be the last of Cass\u2019 Elder novels, but it certainly has the feeling of a swan song, a satisfying ending for a man who needs to put a lot of ghosts to bed before he can figure out who he still is.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boston-based jazz lover and alcoholic Elder Darrow owns a bar\u2014the Esposito\u2014but he\u2019s been slowly losing his passion for the business, and the drinking is starting to catch up with him. When Elder\u2019s best friend, Boston police detective Dan Burton, is gunned down in what appears to be a random liquor store robbery, Elder barely has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}