August Snow

August Snow is a hard-edged, sharp-witted man who is barely keeping his head above water in Detroit. Of mixed African American and Mexican heritage, he grew up in the city's Mexicantown neighborhood. He joined the Detroit police force, but a group of crooked officers and politicians pushed him out. Instead of quietly accepting it, he sued the city and won a $12 million wrongful dismissal settlement, though the fight cost him many of his former allies. A year after leaving, he moves back into the house where he was raised and soon finds that old debts are waiting for him.

He is summoned to the Grosse Pointe Estates mansion of Eleanore Paget, a powerful and manipulative business magnate. She wants him to look into strange events at her private wealth management bank. Detective work is no longer his line of business, so he refuses. The next day Paget is found dead, apparently a suicide, and August does not believe it for a moment. His inquiry takes him from the wealthy suburbs into the crime networks of the city, where corporate embezzlers and tattooed mercenaries operate.

The novel moves between gleaming suburban estates and the nearly post-apocalyptic factory districts of a bankrupt Detroit. Its story covers murder, greed, sex, economic cyberterrorism, race and urban decay. It is the first book in the August Snow series.