Down Don't Bother Me

I' d been demoted and was shoveling slide-back and minding my own business when they found Dwayne Mays' s body in a pile of gob. Shoveling slide-back is maybe the worst job in the mine. Slide-back is what they give you when they want you to quit. It' s a punishment.
In the depths of the Knight Hawk, one of the last working collieries in downstate Illinois, the body of a reporter is found, his mini-recorder tied around his neck and a notepad stuffed in his mouth.
The Knight Hawk' s owner, Matthew Luster, isn' t happy. He wants answers— and he doesn' t want the cops or any more press poking into his business. To protect himself and the operation, he turns to Slim, a mine employee with a reputation for " bloodhounding" — finding lost souls when the police can' t or won' t. Luster needs Slim to locate a missing photographer named Beckett, a close associate of the victim . . . and who just happens to be his son-in-law.
A hardworking single father barely making ends meet, Slim accepts the job— after Luster offers him a guaranteed pension and job security for life. But when you make a deal with the devil, you' re going to get burned . . . and now Slim is all too close to the flames. Circumstances have led him into the grimy underworld of Little Egypt, Illinois— a Babel' s Tower of rednecks, rubes, freaks, tweakers, gun nuts, and aging hippies— and it quickly becomes clear that he' s much more involved in the murder than an innocent man should be.
Down Don' t Bother Me marks the debut of a wildly assured mystery novelist.