BOOK
Lizzie Evans has always been an enigma to her daughter Sunny, gone for years at a time between visits, sending postcards from all over the world, with no real connection between them. On her last visit she left Sunny an envelope containing $50,000 in cash and a note saying that she was going back to Berkshire, Michigan, the town she grew up in, to “settle some things”. A month later she is found dead, murdered in a particularly ugly fashion. Looking for answers Sunny goes to her mother’s hometown, but the questions she asks no one wants to hear.
STORY
The Paradise Lounge was a dump. It was about two miles in distance from the casinos on the Las Vegas strip and about a million miles away in every other category. Outside it looked like a shack and the inside was no better. The half-lit neon signs behind the bar said “udweise” and “iller Lte,” and the floor was covered with what could charitably called a patina of dirt or uncharitably called a layer of filth. The battered oak bar filled up one long half of the room with a fly specked mirror behind it chipped with star shaped cracks, no doubt from the clientele throwing bottles to get the bartenders attention.