Old Broadbrim in a Deep-Sea Struggle

A Quaker detective who trusts no one. A bartender accused of murder he didn't commit. One night of fire, blood, and stolen thousands.

Old Broadbrim doesn't like his new client from the moment Hugo Post walks through the door. The Surfside Hotel landlord has lost ten thousand dollars in a safe-blowing, his guests have been stripped of their valuables, and a man is dead with his throat cut from ear to ear. The police already have their man — Karl Becker, the honest German bartender who carried a corpse out of a burning building to save it.

Broadbrim doesn't believe a word of it.

Something about Post's shifting eyes and rehearsed grief sets the Quaker's instincts on fire. He takes the case anyway, because Becker — frightened, smoke-blackened, and locked in a cell for a heroic act — deserves someone in his corner.

But the deeper Broadbrim digs into the Coney Island underworld, the more dangerous the ground beneath him becomes. A criminal gang with iron discipline and no compunction about murder is still out there, still watching, still working. And the man Broadbrim is supposed to be working for may know more about the fire than he admits.

Now Broadbrim faces the case no detective wants — where the client hides as many secrets as the killer.

Can he pull the truth from the smoke before an innocent man hangs for someone else's crime?