The Cleveland Connection

#4 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . .

Private investigator Milan Jacovich (it's pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovich) is Slovenian-American, but he's familiar with the varied ethnic groups that make up the city of Cleveland. An elderly Serbian man has gone missing, and when his granddaughter suspects foul play, Milan agrees to take up the search.

In the meantime, Milan's good friend, Plain Dealer reporter Ed Stahl, has written a column critical of the gangster element on Cleveland's Murray Hill, and is now being threatened and harassed, which brings Milan into direct conflict with a millionaire garbage hauler and an out-of-town muscle punk named Nello Trinetti.

The Serbs and the Slovenians traditionally don't get along too well, but Milan makes inroads into Cleveland's Serbian community after a shocking murder, eventually coming face-to-face with its unofficial mayor, Lazo Samarzic, an angry and militant man who runs a produce stand in the historic old West Side Market.

Hatreds that have simmered for fifty years eventually explode as Milan Jacovich takes on one of his most challenging cases.

Les Roberts is the author of 13 mystery novels featuring Cleveland detective Milan Jacovich, as well as 9 other books of fiction. The past president of both the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writer’s League, he came to mystery writing after a 24-year career in Hollywood. He was the first producer and head writer of the Hollywood Squares and wrote for the Andy Griffith Show, the Jackie Gleason Show, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E., among others. He has been a professional actor, a singer, a jazz musician, and a teacher. In 2003 he received the Sherwood Anderson Literary Award. A native of Chicago, he currently lives in his adopted home town of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.