The Best Assassination in the Nation

Book excerpt: Benjamin Gold is damaged goods. After he cracked up in the war and was discharged into a psych ward, his rich wife dumped him. Right after that, the white-shoe law firm that never hired Jews dumped him too; without powerful in-laws, it didn't matter how many cases he won or how much he shortened his name. Unemployable as a lawyer, he wound up working as a private eye—and not exactly at the top of the profession. Drunk and anorectic, his only remaining friends are bartenders and bottles. After a long string of jilted wives and small-time scams, Gold isn't expecting the beautiful daughter of his legal hero to show up in his office. Especially not with a crazy theory that her father—recently shot dead, supposedly in a random robbery—was in fact assassinated by order of Cleveland's biggest tycoon, Clayton Forsythe. To prove Judith Sorin's case, Benjamin Gold has to navigate a web of lies and evasion, a legal establishment that's been bought and paid for, disappearing witnesses, the FBI, surprisingly polite thugs, and the Forsythes—who just happen to be his former in-laws. A tall order for anyone, and Benny Goldstein has never been lucky...