Eight Pints Down on Archer Street

Rosa Delgado has poured drinks for every kind of bad evening. She's never found one of her regulars dead in her own alley with his throat open and clean pavement under it. The cops call it a mugging. Rosa calls it a message. She starts asking questions, and the neighborhood goes quiet in that particular way that means someone's scared. Then Tobias Crane walks in, all calm and good manners, and tells her the safest thing she can do is stop asking. Rosa has never once done the safest thing. A Chicago cosy-slash-hardboiled amateur sleuth story with fangs, an empty ledger, and a landlord who deserves what he gets.