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Urban streets don't get much meaner than in the alphabet-street stew of New York City's Lower East Side. But that's where private eye Payton Sherwood plies his trade, a clean-living moralist in a world of drugged-out freakazoids. Coming home late to an empty refrigerator after a court appearance in Syracuse, the slyly self-mocking Payton ("still in my dark blue suit, narrow maroon tie, and shiny black shoes") decides to pop downstairs to his favorite all-night deli for a jug of milk and a box of Cheerios. But the store has gone out of business during his nine-day absence; he's forced to wander farther east for his needs and winds up having the stuffing kicked out of him when he stops to defend a street girl from attack by a trio of bozos. Worse yet, the girl comes back to steal his Rolex! Highly motivated and mightily pissed, Sherwood goes after the girl and ends up in a former church, now a nightclub called the Hellhole. The real fun of Russell Atwood's first (but obviously not last) mystery is watching him ring all the changes he can on the traditional noir icons without leaning on the crutches of camp or disrespect. --Dick Adler
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