Chicagos unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball. When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find Lamont Gadsden, a man whos been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile turns lethal. Old skeletons from the citys racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance. To complicate matters, Petra, a young cousin whom V.I. has never met, arrives from Kansas City to work on a political campaign. It does not take long for the high-spirited yet likable Petra to win over V.
