Deep Shaker [signed] [first edition]

#3 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . . No one is as loyal to old friends as Cleveland private investigator Milan Jacovich (it’s pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovich). So when a grade school chum worries his son Paulie might be selling drugs, Milan has no choice but to help. Milan turn up Paulie’s connection, a handsome Jamaican named Deshon who pals around with two baseball-bat wielding thugs and a German shepherd dog who looks like he’s all business. The narcotics business makes curious bedfellows, as Milan discovers during his investigation of a particularly brutal murder; he butts heads with a wily realtor named Christmas, a flamboyant automobile dealer with lofty political ambitions, an edgy street pusher, and his old friends from the Little Italy mob, Don Giancarlo D’Allessandro and Victor Gaimari. Milan also encounters a drug gang unparalleled in their savagery, and unearths a relic from every Clevelander’s childhood that proves to be deadly.