Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

By Ed Gorman

At the height of the Cold War, a dead woman turns up in a bomb shelter.

Black River Falls used to be a boring small town, but at the pinnacle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, nowhere in America can be boring anymore. As the country awaits nuclear annihilation, Iowa gubernatorial favorite Ross Murdoch has a crisis of his own: There is a dead woman in his bomb shelter.

Murdoch tells his lawyer, Sam McCain, that the corpse was planted there by his enemies in the local police force, and begs McCain to clear his name before Election Day. The dead woman was mistress to four of the town's most powerful men -- any of whom might have wanted her dead. As the nation's nuclear paranoia reaches a fever pitch, McCain searches for a killer and learns that there are certain kinds of disaster for which even the finest bomb shelter is no match.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784085001

Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman, the Shamus Award winning author of more than a dozen novels and many short stories, has edited a number of anthologies, including The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories series. He lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Reviews for Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

[auntie0nanuuq · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ongoing discussion of the Cuban Missile Crisis rather ruined the book for me... but if not for that, there'd have been no stashing the body of the shared mistress in the popular gubernatorial candidates' newly built bomb shelter.Four men, one shared mistress, blackmail, & a greedy brother makes for an interesting who-done-it and a very fast read.