Chicago’s unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball. When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find Lamont Gadsden, a man who’s been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile turns lethal. Old skeletons from the city’s racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets — her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her — rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance. To complicate matters, Petra, a young cousin whom V.I. has never met, arrives from Kansas City to work on a political campaign. It does not take long for the high-spirited yet likable Petra to win over V.