Third Degree: 3 Authors 3 Novellas

Cut Loose All Those Who Drag You Down by Ross Klavan The story of what turns out to be a very very bad night. A crooked reporter who fronts for the mob and whos been married eight times is minding his own business at home when he gets a sudden visit from his oldest friend a disgraced and defrocked shrink. The man is in deep trouble. He needs a place to hide. The problem is he refuses to admit to exactly whats wrong and so there begins a heated drunken drug-fueled discussion that runs through failed marriages divorces mistresses murders suicides police raids that went wrong meetings with strange women in the desert a child with killing on his mind and more. When its finished the answer to whats wrong becomes horribly clear...and somebody is going to pay with his life. Beaned by Tim OMara Hours after successfully transporting smuggled maple syrup from Missouri to New York City and picking up a truckload of maple-syrup related products for the return trip Aggie and his new partners decide its more important to help take down a sex-trafficking ring based out of Manhattan. Taking care of business first-trading the maple-syrup products for high-end coffee beans and distributing the new cargo-Aggie takes off for The Big Apple. His mission: help take down the billionaire whos funding the trafficking of under-aged children for the pleasure of other rich folks. His trip takes him to Manhattans toney Upper East Side to a final confrontation in the US Virgin Islands. The Fifth Column by Charles Salzberg Several months after the shock of Pearl Harbor thrusts America into the war Jake Harper a young Connecticut reporter gets his dream job on a New York City Newspaper. Returning to the city of his birth Jake meets a young boy whos been bullied and savagely beaten in a schoolyard by a bunch of young toughs wearing Brown shirts and railing against Jews. Jake who smells a possible story suspects the resurgence of the German-American Bund on the Upper East Side. As he digs deeper he begins to suspect that the supposedly disbanded Bund is alive and well and making plans to sabotage the American war effort.