Patrick Barnard

It began with a simple note: a letter of rejection delivered to Miss Temple on her maid's silver tray. But for Miss Temple, her fiance's cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for truth, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors. Thus begins Gordon Dahlquist's spectacular literary debut, a novel of Victorian suspense that shatters conventions and seethes with danger and eroticism.

Tampa, Florida, 1955: a city pulsing with Sicilian and Cuban gangsters, cigar factories, sweet rum, and violence. The bludgeoning death of retired kingpin Charlie Wall shocks the city and sends cops and reporters and associates scrambling to discover the truth. When the old White Shadow ruled the city, plenty of his enemies tried, and failed, to kill him. Many are left wondering about the final hand of the old bootlegger and gambler.