Westerfield's Chain

The Nick Acropolis novels, #1

 “Westerfield’s Chain,” was first published by St. Martin's in 2002, and was a Shamus Award Finalist.  KirkusReviews said: "When someone asks ex–homicide cop Nick Acropolis if he misses being on the job, he replies, “Every fucking day,” acknowledging a painful truth. He misses the work, the camaraderie, but most of all the self-respect, that sense of himself as someone who matters, acquired over the 15 years he served as a high-profile Chicago police detective—and snatched from him wrongfully, he insists, by men who knew better. Now Nick’s a small-timer, a hand-to-mouth p.i. investigating the peccadilloes of other small-timers and hating every minute of it—as he’s hating the minute he serendipitously bumps into spunky young Rebecca Westerfield, who’s searching for her missing father while Nick’s tracking down the missing witness to a minor auto accident. On the surface, there’s not much to connect the two cases, but Nick ever regards a surface as the thin veneer of a secret—in this case, a lot of secrets, most of them nasty, fraudulent, or positively lethal. Before he’s through sleuthing, Nick uncovers a multimillion-dollar welfare scam, solves a brutal murder or two, locates Becky’s worthless dad, and lightens the lives of a couple of eminently worthwhile ladies. In addition, he gets to experience the heady pleasures of a higher profile once more as he thumbs his nose at the corps of bilious blue-clad bureaucrats who summarily sacked him.

The Chicago Tribune called the book the best mystery of the month and said, "There's a memorable moment [on] virtually every page."