Family Business

Douglas J. Keeling "staked out his territory with a fresh and provocative eye" (Birch Lane Press) with his first novel, A CASE OF INNOCENCE, which Kirkus Reviews called a "follow-in-the-golden-age-footsteps-of-Spade-and-Marlow first novel, with nice, sardonic touches-a strong start," and Publisher's Weekly dubbed "an amusing entry in the tough-private-eye genre." In his new novel, FAMILY BUSINESS, Keeling takes on a timely and controversial subject with which he is intimately familiar to weave a tale that is both intriguing and impactful, as seen through the eyes of new character Luke Kelsey. Lucas Kelsey, a Kansas City attorney whose comfortable but relatively mundane legal practice centers around adoption cases, finds his world turned upside down when he discovers the body of a murdered four-year-old girl in his office. Never in his wildest dreams could he imagine how the case would come to involve him, and then pull him into a vortex where past meets present. As Kelsey tries to protect his family from the killer while unraveling the mystery, he is forced to confront issues from his own life that surface unexpectedly in connection with the murder, leading to a stunning, dramatic conclusion. In this fast-paced thriller, Keeling draws on his unique knowledge of the worlds of law and adoption, and his roots in hard-boiled detective fiction, to pen a study in crime and human drama as complex as it is compelling.