No One Rides for Free

When the general counsel for an avaricious conglomerate decides to spill all to an SEC investigator, private eye Tony Cassella is paid by a partner in a Wall Street law firm to get the transcript. The man is murdered in a mugging and Tony, no longer needed by the law firm, is hired by the victim's daughter to find who killed him. With a background that includes a stint as a corrections officer, a previous cocaine dependency and a year at Yale Law School, Casella is well equipped to follow the case from upper-crust Long Island to the Mafia fringe. What he can't do so well is stay faithful to his woman, or away from his old dealer. In this ambitious and convincing mystery, Cassella is a raw, believable hero-as-detective, an Everyman in whom love and sex, honor and revenge, desire and will play a piper's tune in counterpoint. Readers will root for Cassella to stay clean long enough to be hero of another tale. Foreign rights: Lantz Office. February 24