Throwaway Girl (Five Star Mystery Series)

The last year has been tough for Augustine Flood. His girlfriend left him, his business is in shambles and he's acting like a serious drunk. But a phone call from one of Chicago's most powerful lawyers pulls him out of his fog.

Summoned to an office in the Willis Tower, Flood is offered a fat check to investigate what looks like an open and shut case. His wealthy new client's daughter drowned in Lake Michigan two weeks earlier and the police have all but dismissed the case as an accident, or even suicide. But Jane Ash believes her daughter, A. J., had too much purpose and drive to take her own life.
Despite her mother's suspicions, Flood suspects the police are right. But he's in no position to turn down the money, and someone needs to explain the packet of heroin in the dead woman's apartment and the thousands missing from her bank account. The answers provide no comfort. Flood's questions open the lid on a dangerous and ugly world where A.J. Ash's young clients dwelled.

In Throwaway Girl, Flood descends into the depths of America's sex trade a journey that takes him from the sordid massage parlors of Chicago suburbs to the poverty of the Mississippi Delta, even the underbelly of Las Vegas neon playground.

But will he survive long enough to find out what really happened to A. J. Ash?