Gold for the Dead

<p><strong>Lambda Literary Award-winning author Ann Aptaker's Cantor Gold faces the questions of who are her real friends and how far would she go to avenge their deaths.</strong></p><br><p><em>Early November 1958</em></p><br><p><em>New York City</em></p><br><p>Art thief and smuggler Cantor Gold's latest underworld caper begins when she arrives at big-time bookie Nick Fortunato's apartment to celebrate his birthday a ritual the two friends have enjoyed for years. But Nick is missing and there's blood on the living room carpet. It's not Nick's blood though. Nick's death still awaits him. Despite crime lord Sig Loreale's best plans to protect Nick with whom Sig has financial dealings a killer finds Nick hidden away in a cheap hotel owned by Loreale.</p><br><p>Among the players in this tale of friendship betrayal and the competition for power between the young and the aging is the beautiful and possibly deadly Abbey O'Brien. She was Nick's right hand in his bookie operation and now that he's dead she stands to either gain big or lose even bigger.</p><br><p>The operatives and bettors in Nick's bookmaking business have a stake in Nick's death too...and motives to either solve his murder or get him out of the way: there's Freddie Holmes who sizes you up before you're allowed entry into the betting parlor; Mike Leandro leader of the crew that takes phoned-in bets; Chickie D'Andrea who posts the odds from every track and sporting event; Harry Horsehide Lanz a major gambler and trackside aficionado; Sylvia Georgiadis an aging grand dame of the gambling world; and others.</p><br><p>Assisting Cantor as always are her young Guy Friday Judson Zane; cabbie sometime getaway driver and sometime friend with benefits Rosie Bliss; and Cantor's criminal mentor Esther Mom Sheinbaum.</p><br><p>And always circling are the cops.</p>