From the dust jacket: "Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley is dead, political clout is up for grabs, and a new candidate is angling for easy votes-by hanging a bad cop on a tree. From City Hall to the hooker's stroll, the word is out: someone's picked the scapegoat, and it's Ray Sharkey. BONEYARDS..portrait of this rogue police officer whose own ruthless code may bring him down.
...Sharkey has seen it all, before and after the day he stoped paying for his own beers and shots...he started on the take to cover his daughter's medical bills, though he'd long ago been warned: 'Bad cops don't start out running a string of whores or taking out contracts on somebody's life. They all start out with a nickel heist.'
Detective Sharkey's got a murder to investigate on one hand, and a reputation that's crumbling on the either; a dying wife upstate, and a too-innocent partner in his unmarked car. He has associations some people might call illegitimate and reason to worry: about a woman with a grievance that goes back to his days as a lusty hero fresh from WW II, about a hoodlum named Frankie Blue Shoes who's working the game both ways, and even about his own on-the-side business partner."
...Sharkey has seen it all, before and after the day he stoped paying for his own beers and shots...he started on the take to cover his daughter's medical bills, though he'd long ago been warned: 'Bad cops don't start out running a string of whores or taking out contracts on somebody's life. They all start out with a nickel heist.'
Detective Sharkey's got a murder to investigate on one hand, and a reputation that's crumbling on the either; a dying wife upstate, and a too-innocent partner in his unmarked car. He has associations some people might call illegitimate and reason to worry: about a woman with a grievance that goes back to his days as a lusty hero fresh from WW II, about a hoodlum named Frankie Blue Shoes who's working the game both ways, and even about his own on-the-side business partner."