If he hadn't turned into the rest stop, Deacon Bishop wouldn't have heard about the hundred million dollars--or gotten involved with his favorite Mafia family. But he stopped--and gave a woman a lift. A few miles later, Bishop is injured, his car exploded, and the woman is dead--with shots from Bishop's gun through her head, Bishop was involved. He could have done without the dead woman and the injuries, but a hundred million dollars is worth a bit of grief, and the private investigation business doesn't often turn up that kind of money.

Chapter 1 Wednesday, August 5th, 1936. 11:15 am. Eggie's Cafe, East 56th street, NYC. Philo Vance was toying with a cheese and green-pepper omelet when District Attorney John F.-X. Markham sat down at his table. "I stopped at your apartment when I heard you were back in town, Vance," declared Markham, "but Currie said you were having breakfast, here. How was the shareholder's meeting in Chicago?" The District Attorney was a tall, strongly built man of forty-some years with a clean-shaven, chiseled face beneath a neatly trimmed mop of uniformly gray hair. He was not handsome. However he had an...

The invitation from Edgar Pelican arrived at Dr. Clayton Niles' office, by courier. It was ivory-colored, gilt-edged, watermarked, scented with chicory and embossed with the Pelican family crest: two eagles devouring a duck. A certified check accompanied the summons, favoring Dr. Niles in the amount of one thousand dollars. Clayton settled his lean, six-foot frame in the swivel-chair behind his desk and studied the jagged signature on the draft. "An expensive way to request a psychiatrist's time," he mused. Then he scratched his thinning blonde hair. "Daddy's little boy must be up to his ass...

"Are these chicken eggs, Rita?" Dr. Clayton Niles and his wife, Rita, were having breakfast in the kitchen of their oceanfront home; just outside of Galveston, Texas. Clayton, with his stoic middle-aged determination, sat at the table studying his breakfast - two eggs fried sunny-side up - from multiple angles. Rita sat across from her perennially perplexed husband, buttering a slice of toast. Clayton raised the plate to eye-level and tilted it slightly; taking advantage of the sunlight streaming in through the adjacent window to further interrogate his meal. "They don't look like chicken...

Ex-cop Deacon Bishop gets his first case when a beautiful woman claims she's in need of a bodyguard. Bishop wants to guard the body all right, but it will take all of his detecting skills to keep even himself alive. Author Michael Paulson has created a graphic novel staring the popular Deacon Bishop. A sexy and fun read.