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by Les Roberts (Author)
Private investigator Milan Jacovich (MY-lan YOCK-ovich), a Slovenian-American, is familiar with the wide variety of ethnic groups that make up the city of Cleveland -- especially those in his old neighborhood. When an elderly Serbian goes missing and his granddaughter suspects foul play, Milan takes up the search.
In the meantime, Milan's good friend, Plain Dealer reporter Ed Stahl, has written a column critical of the gangster element on Cleveland's Murray Hill, and is now being threatened and harassed, which brings Milan into direct conflict with a millionaire garbage hauler and an out-of-town muscle punk named Nello Trinetti.
The Serbs and the Slovenians traditionally don't get along too well, but Milan makes inroads into Cleveland's Serbian community after a shocking murder, eventually coming face-to-face with its unofficial mayor, Lazo Samarzic, an angry and militant man who runs a produce stand in the historic old West Side Market.
Hatreds that have simmered for fifty years eventually explode as Milan Jacovich takes on one of his most challenging cases.
Back Jacket
Clevland, Ohio is a city of many faces. Home of one of the country's great symphony orchestras, it is home as well of "the only river in the world that's a fire hazard". It is also the home of a large population of immigrants from Central Europe, elderly now, who have brought with them and kept alive in their children, antagonisms that mirror the tragic conflicts even now tearing their former nations apart. Milan Jacovich, Roberts's likable and very human private eye, is American by birth, Slovene by heritage, and savvy enough to shy away from involvement in the enmity between Serbs and Croats. Until an appealing young woman convinces him to help in the search for her missing Serbian grandfather. Conscientiously, Milan follows the sparse clues in Bogdan Zdale's disappearance: He seeks out the formidable elder who rules Cleveland's Serbian community. He braves belligerant Croats. He investigates a possible connection with the sudden appearance in town of a mob hit man. As he digs deeper, he discovers there is more to the case than the wayward wandering of a forgetful old man. Zdale had a secret - one that goes back half a century with roots in World War II. Stirring up old hatreds results in an explosive - and surprising denoument, a dramatic ending to a story that rings as true as this morning's newspaper.
