TAMPA, Fla. - eTradeWire -- Down & Out Books is pleased to announce that AN ONLY CHILD, a Novel of Suspense by Les Roberts, has been published on February 12, 2024 in trade paperback and ebook formats.

About AN ONLY CHILD …

Russell Reinhart, a well-known author of private eye novels, is released from the Illinois State Prison in Joliet after serving seven years for the involuntary manslaughter of his wife. He returns to Chicago, welcomed home by his top-flight attorney who tucked away all his millions so no one could get hold of them while he was incarcerated, and rented him an elegant apartment in the Near North neighborhood, half a block from Lake Michigan.

Reinert was an only child, adopted when an infant, and now he has no one to whom he can turn. His release from prison is reported by the local papers, and he's contacted by a man he's never heard of named Cole Cabot. A few years earlier, Cabot had married Reinert's extra-curricular girlfriend, Aubrey, who has suddenly gone missing. Russ pleads he's no private eye but just writes fiction about them, but worries his ex-lover has disappeared, so agrees to take on the case. He learns Aubrey was also the mistress of one of the world's richest men in America, Gaylord Ogilvie, at the same time she was with him. Having investigative trouble, he is helped by the young son of a man who met while he was in prison, a huge, half-illiterate black man named Denver Tolliver, who saved his life behind bars several times. Denver was locked up for life after killing a police officer, but his college-student son is brilliant loyal, intelligent and wise.

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When he runs into danger that might turn permanent, he hadn't forgotten how Denver Tolliver had taught him to prison-fight, and he eventually learns he's not that much alone as he thought he was.

Meet the author …

LES ROBERTS came to mystery writing by winning the very first "First Private Eye Novel" Contest, which gave him his literary. Prior to that, he worked in Los Angeles for a quarter of a century, writing and/or producing more than 2500 half hours of network and syndicated television. A Chicago native, he has lived for the past 31 years in Northeast Ohio.

In its thirteenth year as an independent publisher of award-winning literary and crime fiction, Down & Out Books (https://downandoutbooks.com) is based in Tampa, Florida. For more information about the book, to request a review copy of the book, or to inquire about an interview with the author, contact info@downandoutbooks.com.