Rainville

A small-time racketeer is found dead in his rented rooms in an old hotel-no electricity liquor bottles corked with candle stubs on the windowsills a coat hanger twisted up for making toast over one of the burners of the gas stove. A local character who leaves behind a collection of garbage bags filled with dryer lint and his gangster tales of liquor runs and bawdy houses fixed fights and doped-up ponies and bought-off baseball players. Karl Neidhardt alias Steve Bowman The Orchid Man.</P><I>RAINVILLE</I> is the story of Garrick a hardboiled lawyer with a failing practice who takes the case of Catherine Eddows a shadowy <I>Nite Mart</I> clerk who claims to be Neidhardt's daughter and heiress. But in this case nobody finds thousands of dollars hidden in the decedent's mattress or a shoebox full of bankbooks under his floorboards. The mystery for Garrick then is why Catherine Eddows has hired him. </P>A <I>noir</I> lawyer's tale <I>RAINVILLE</I> tracks Garrick's shaky attempt to stay true to a code while confronted with the problems of addiction and identity mythology and fact-and the riddle of Catherine Eddows. </P>