Book excerpt: Bar owner Elder Darrow shakes up Boston’s crime scene. “Atmospheric and dark . . . This killer of a reading ride will entertain and haunt you.”—Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author At the urging of his sometimes lover and sometimes drinking partner Jacquie Robillard, Elder Darrow uses the last of the money from the trust fund his mother left him to buy the Esposito, a bucket-of-blood bar in Boston that he plans to turn into a jazz nightclub. But before he can turn the place around, the body of jazz guitar player Timmy McGuire shows up on the small stage at the Esposito, stabbed to death. Because she had a contentious relationship with the musician, Jacquie is arrested for Timmy McGuire’s murder. But Elder is certain something darker and deeper than a lover’s quarrel is at stake. And when Jacquie is released on bail—and turns up dead—Elder is drawn into a mystery going back to Timmy’s childhood, an arson in the three-decker in Mattapan where he grew up, and the unraveling of a political conspiracy in “a dark bluesy mystery steeped in Bostonian tradition and prose” (Bruce Robert Coffin, bestselling author of the Detective Byron Mysteries). “Richard Cass writes the kind of mysteries I first fell in love with—clever, twisty, and brimming with characters as colorful as they are well-drawn.”—Chris Holm, Anthony Award-winning author of Michael Hendricks Novels “Cass’s version of noir Boston is dark and beautiful as a back alley after a morning rain.”—Gerry Boyle, author of the Jack McMorrow Mysteries