The Dutch

A Milan Jacovich Mystery

by Les Roberts

  • Format: Softcover, 304 pages, 5.1 x 8 inches
  • ISBN: 978-1-59851-012-6
  • Price: $13.95
Description

#12 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . .

In street parlance, “ the dutch” is another expression for suicide. That's what everyone assumes happened to Ellen Carnine when her broken body is found 150 feet below the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in downtown Cleveland. A terse, sad suicide note has been left on the screen of her home computer.

But her grieving father asks private eye Milan Jacovich (it's pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovitch) to figure out why a bright and successful, dot-com executive like Ellen took her own life. Milan is introduced to a different reality by Ellen's four best female friends, an old lover, her employers, and some of the lowlifes from Cleveland's meanest streets.

The search for the truth leads Milan into the unfamiliar territory of Internet chat rooms, where he learns a great deal about the faceless people who live part of their lives behind a screen, becoming best friends— or bitter enemies— without actually meeting.

Milan pushes too far— and uncovers the most brutal and heinous crime he's ever faced.

Book Excerpt:
Chapter One

The bridge, with its four landmark pylons in the shape of giants, “ Titans of Transportation,” holding in their huge hands various modes of travel like buses and trucks and streetcars, stretches across the Cuyahoga River and connects the two avenues for which it is named, and is one of the primary arteries between the east and west sides of Cleveland. A few years back it was officially rechristened the Hope Memorial Bridge, after the father of local favorite son Bob Hope; the elder Hope worked as a stonemason during its construction. But no real Clevelander ever calls it that, just as New Yorkers still say “ Sixth Avenue” instead of the newer “ Avenue of the Americas,” even after fifty years.

The bridge is less than a mile from my office on the west bank of the river in the industrial area known as the Flats. I wasn't anywhere near it, though, but home asleep when Ellen Carnine plunged one hundred and forty-some feet over the concrete balustrade, smashing her skull, breaking her neck and fracturing most of the other bones in her body when she landed.

The coroner estimated that the time of death was around four o'clock in the morning, but I didn't know about it until just before nine, when I was driving to work down Cedar Hill from my apartment in Cleveland Heights, sipping a go-cup of the last of my morning coffee and listening to the news and the laughs on the John Lanigan and Jimmy Malone Show on WMJI radio.

I winced a little when newsman Chip Kullik read the report— jumping off a bridge had to be one of the worst ways to go— and felt . . . [ Read More Free Samples ]

Reviews
Brilliantly plotted, with a powerhouse climax. — Booklist
About Les Roberts
Les Roberts

Les Roberts is the author of 14 mystery novels featuring Cleveland detective Milan Jacovich, as well as 9 other books of fiction. The past president of both the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writer's League, he came to mystery writing after a 24-year career in Hollywood. He was the first producer and head writer of the Hollywood Squares and wrote for the Andy Griffith Show, the Jackie Gleason Show, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E., among others. He has been a professional actor, a singer, a jazz musician, and a teacher. In 2003 he received the Sherwood Anderson Literary Award. A native of Chicago, he now lives in Northeast Ohio. More About Les Roberts

Contains References to:

Beachwood, Cedar Hill , Cleveland Author, Cleveland Mysteries, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland Press, Kent State, Milan Jacovich, Nighttown, Pepper Pike, Shaker Heights, Slovenian Americans, Stroh's , Terminal Tower, Tower City

Other books by Les Roberts:
If you like The Dutch, then you should try: