Robert Westland's date with the executioner is just around the corner
when he finally decides to fight the murder rap sending him to the
electric chair. Framed for his wife's grisly demise, Westland is in a
bind, and his last hope is Bill Crane, a booze-soaked detective who's as
ruthless with a quip as he is when trawling the streets for Chicago's
most brutal criminal element.
Crane's got just six days to suss out the real killer--he sets his
sights on a cast of oddball characters, aided by a lime squeezer, a
quart of whiskey, a monkey wrench, a taxicab, a stopwatch, and a deep
sea diver... but in 1930s Chicago, everyone's got a secret, and the
pressure is on for Crane to separate the dangerous from the truly
homicidal before it's too late. Chicago crime beat
journalist-turned-novelist Jonathan Latimer blends hardboiled detective
fiction with a shot of screwball comedy in the fast-moving, realistic
1935 baffler Headed for a Hearse, an exciting combination of the macabre
and the humorous.
Includes discussion guide questions for use in book clubs.