Overview

Running from the mob is deadly. But running from your past...that's impossible. For twenty years, adoptive gangster Jimmy the Grayduck has become the best bag man for the Chicago Polish mob. He's earned the trust of Boss Vikk Korsack and is engaged to his youngest daughter Melina. The envy of every wiseguy in the Windy City, Jimmy's secret, runaway past still haunts him: the cursed satchel he and his childhood friends unearthed from an Ojibwe burial mound. It destroyed his family and childhood but helped him clean up after the mob and make a name for himself. But when Vikk retires and appoints the Grayduck his successor, Jimmy's past kicks back. His last job is to dispose of a hooded woman locked in a storage unit. A woman who threatens to topple everything he built in Chicago and force him to confront his past. Can Jimmy have the best of both worlds? Or will he be forced to cash out and run from the mob? Why readers can't stop turning pages: High-stakes tension in a gritty, mob world: Catch up with Jimmy the Grayduck as he navigates the Chicago underworld filled with wiseguys, mob hits, evidence disposal, and the panic-induced anxiety it takes to survive, when one misstep can kill you. A past that won't stay buried and secrets that could kill: Uncover the dark truths of Jimmy's past in Minnesota as a teen, that left a community, and its people, traumatized before he took matters into his own hands and ran away from home. Rekindled romance amid desperation and survival: Witness a couple tackle the danger of trying to escape the mob, while rekindling the deep romance they thought died years ago. Midwestern escape with hitmen, safe houses, and second chances: Journey with our couple as they make their way to Alaska, avoiding the hitters on their tail, but making one last stop back home, before they erase themselves from the world forever. A slightly supernatural mob thriller: Take Goodfellas and smash it up with Stranger Things in a story that pairs real-world mob threats with supernatural ones, that lead to a nail-biting, on-the-road romance, with a backstory so dark, you may not recover. If you need a dark love story told against a mob backdrop, bone-chilling tension, and a trauma-filled childhood, then step across the line and venture into the gray!

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Reviews

""If Stand by Me is about the bonds that shape us and Snatch is about the reckless momentum of the criminal underworld, Grayduck sits somewhere between them, adding its own darkly Midwestern, slightly mystical spin. It is a tough, engaging read with real heart under the bruises."" -Michael MacBride, author of At the Wake, The Great Clivette, and Voyager. ""In prose so taught with action you'll stay up late turning pages, Welvaert's story brings us back to teenage love, and then shoots us into a dark alley where he punches us in the gut only to tease us back with a light of hope. Readers, you will follow that light all the way to the Minnesota woods. But buckle up on the way, this ride is a killer."" -James Arlen Anderson, author of The Storm Next Door ""A voice inspired by those charming ""wise guys"" we both fear and love...the nostalgia of growing up in the Eighties playing arcade Pac Man and copping your first feel off your first big crush...the pulse-thumping danger of a Sopranos hit-or not. Grayduck is the kind of tale that makes you wish that you too got tapped by fate to become a gangster. Then you'd be astoundingly lucky because Scott Welvaert would be telling your story, loaded with all the blood and lust and angst, and with your favorite hard rock soundtrack thumping in the background.""-Clifford Evan, author of A Death Never Lived

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