The Duke of Cleveland, Finished 5-28-12, rating 4/5, mystery series, 257 pages, pub. 1995

Book 6 of the Milan Jacovich series (Book 1) (Book 2) (Book 3) (Book 4) (Book 5)

Les is an adopted Clevelander.  He had a successful career in Hollywood and was in Cleveland for a job when he fell in love with the city.  In 1990 he moved to Cleveland and calls it his spiritual home.  His website is here.  Les gets the city and its suburbs just right in this mystery series set in Cleveland and I highly recommend it.  This is the second stop on my Ohio tour.

They looked pretty much the way they had for a hundred years or more, solid and functional.  But like the steel mills that define the banks of the Cuyahoga River, the semideserted factories near downtown Cleveland have a terrible beauty.  They stand for an era that has practically faded from consciousness, the days when the industrial Northeast and Midwest set the pulse of America, and her immigrant sons and daughters made her sing.

Chapter 2 

Slovenian private detective Milan Jacovich is a tough middle-aged man who displays his old-fashioned morals as a shield for all to see.  Never one to turn away from a fight he’s been in a scrape or two and has always come out in one piece.  When a rich girl with nothing but attitude comes to him to find her missing boyfriend, he takes the case.  What starts as a search for loser Jeff Feldman turns into a wild goose chase for a rare piece of porcelain, which brings him, once again, into the Cleveland mob’s web.

Milan is such a real character.  He is proud of his ethnicity and he’s proud of his two sons, hoping he’s being the best dad he can be since he only sees them on weekends.

Looking at my two loves, I wondered if there was anything a parent could really do, that I could do, that would guarantee them honor and decency and whatever measure of happiness the future might hold.  Or is life simply a dangerous crapshoot?

Chapter 19

How can you not love a man who loves his boys so dearly?  This series is full of interesting characters and a real insight into the city and it’s underbelly.  The mystery, as always is top notch.

I love this series and although I recommend you read them in order (because that’s what I do) this could certainly be read as a stand alone.

This was from my personal library.