Long Arm of the Past

Scott Morgan grows suspicious when the long-standing chairman of the global consulting firm where he built his career abruptly retires and dies a short time later. Scott gains the firm's permission to launch a quiet investigation into the cause of the chairman's demise and shocks himself by hiring Delmore Kerbich, a former homicide detective with the New York Police Department, to lead the charge. Delmore Kerbich. The man who, when the writer Ed Blaus was murdered in Scott's daughter's Chelsea apartment years earlier, put Scott and his loved ones under the hot light of high suspicion, upending their lives. But Scott knows Delmore possesses the skills necessary for this latest mission.

When Delmore, now a private investigator, gets involved, he becomes aware of years of underhanded schemes the consulting firm carried out with the aid of a nefarious investigatory group. Scott has his own history with that crew. Suddenly, the past is everywhere, and it poses profound threats. Scott must balance his desire to discover the truth about the chairman's death with his desperate need to keep his own morally dubious past actions from surfacing. Meanwhile, Delmore harbors his own compelling personal reason for engaging with Scott. He's also determined to identify and unseat the head of the clandestine group that's done dirty work for the consultants.

In the midst of all this, Scott enters into a romance that carries its own need for strict secrecy. Multiple mysteries hurtle toward startling resolutions as Scott and Delmore are forced to work together and make sense of their new relationship. While the novel stands on its own, it's also the second installment in the Scott Morgan mystery series, written by longtime journalist Neal Lipschutz, former deputy editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal.