Start Shooting
Hopes and dreams can propel you through the fire; or they can burn you to death.
1975, Chicago: Coleen Brennan and Bobby Vargas fall in love at age six. At thirteen their secret kills Coleen, breaks Bobby’s heart forever, and makes Coleen’s twin sister Arleen a runaway who’s never found.
Until today. Arleen Brennan reappears in Chicago to vie for the last-chance breakthrough role that has eluded her for two decades as an actress. Bobby never left; he’s a gang cop caught in a street war that could derail the city’s upcoming bid to host the Olympics.
When Bobby and Arleen collide, their reunion shocks them to their knees. Together they enter a twisted labyrinth of neighborhood secrets, gangland politics and murderous betrayal that threatens to consume everyone it touches.
As readers and critics discovered in his first novel, Calumet City, Charlie Newton’s Chicago is a landscape as brutal and poignant as any in modern crime fiction—a multi-faceted, shockingly violent labyrinth of gangland politics, political backstabbing, corporate malfeasance, and, possibly, hope.