Los Angeles, 1949. The smog burns your eyes. The vampires own the night. And Jack Mitchell just ran out of bourbon.

“Sympathetic but unsentimental... a sharp-edged urban fantasy.” —Publishers Weekly

Jack Mitchell is a private eye hanging on by a thread in a city that always stays awake—mostly because half the population is undead. He’s a combat vet who knows that in L.A., the color of your skin does not really matter, but the temperature of your blood can matter a whole lot.

Jack’s business model is simple: he solves problems for people who can’t go to the cops. But when Dora Urban walks into his office, the rules change.

Dora is stunning, wealthy, and aristocratic. She’s also a vampire who hasn’t breathed in centuries. She wants Jack to find her missing half-brother, Rudolf, paying in heavy gold coins for his troubles.

It sounds like a standard missing persons case, until Jack starts kicking over rocks.

What crawls out isn't just a missing vampire. It's a nightmarish mystery that goes from the gutters of Vampire Village to the boardrooms of US Rubber:

• The Drug: A strange substance called "vepratoga" that the undead are desperate to find.
• The Labor: A factory guarded by Assyrian gods where the workers aren't just tired—they're legally dead zombies.
• The Law: A police force so corrupt they charge extra for protection against sorcery.

Jack Mitchell is about to find out that in a city of ghosts, ghouls, and grifters, the scariest monster is still the one signing the paychecks.

From New York Times Bestselling Author Harry Turtledove comes a hard-boiled noir where the shadows bite back.