Dan Kirk, a reporter for the "Detroit Free Press," watched as police pulled the body of a young woman from the Clinton River, noting the single bullet hole and no identification. It was 1945 and the War was over. What tragedy could have befallen this woman at such a jubilant time?

Kirk's investigation takes him to tiny Flat River, Missouri where the man accused of the murder, Clifford Malin, grew up, and where Kirk discovers a dark past. Malin left Missouri in 1920 for a career as a policeman in Detroit during a time of smuggling, corruption and The Purple Gang, the city's underworld...