The Mercy Killers

On a rainy evening in the spring of 1967, Old Jerry hunkers on his bar stool like a liquor-soaked question mark...

So begins the story of Old Jerry, seventy years old, a lifetime drunk, and ready to die. His grandson Charlie has troubles of his own: the scars of a father`s rage, a juvenile record, and brother P.T., who lives in another world with the ghost of their long-dead mother. When Old Jerry fails to show up for his birthday party at McGurk`s Tap Room, these two young men are the first to ask questions. But the discovery of the old man`s body in a nearby lake will send one off to war in Vietnam-and everyone else to pick up the pieces. Set in the dusky world of a working-class Midwestern city, The Mercy Killers tells a chilling story of actions taken in the name of love, and of histories spun from unspeakable pasts. Sharply written and stylistically brilliant, The Mercy Killers I a wonderful novel of crime with an authentic human story at its heart.

-Chicago Sun-Times Reardon takes us into a world so complete...that nothing seems more important than reading these pages and discovering what her vivid, ferocious characters will do next.

-Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona Reardon...keeps the action churning away.

-Chicago Tribune