Hit on the House - Hardcover

Someone is taking out the senior gangsters of Detroit; Big Sid is shot outside his house and Frosty Tubman in a dark alley, and there is money missing, lots and lots of money. In Hit on the House, homicide cop Mulheisen mounts an investigation, of course, and so do the surviving seniors of gangland; Joe Service swore he would never go back to Detroit, but the money he is being offered to investigate is too good by half to refuse. We know who did the first killing, of course, but the later ones remain something of a mystery almost to the end of the book; the fun and the puzzle here is as much to do with watching two professionals investigating the same facts from very different angles and with very different agendas. This is also a toughly sentimental book, in which both detectives find a sort of love, and both find out rather more about that love than they ever really wanted to know. Jackson's sardonically witty thriller of embezzlement and embarrassment is a quiet triumph of understated noir fiction with a real sense of place and some memorable characters. --Roz Kaveney