Plunged into the legal morass of a 17-year-old-murder case, Balzic faces a variety of cons, each offering different variations of a drug deal gone wrong, and two corpses left in a mountain log cabin. Balzic's interviews lead him to a small-town police chief who carried out his own personal reign of terror over the decades -- looting, raping, and murdering the denizens of his borough. In discovering the history of this monster, Balzic must now enter his very own heart of darkness."It's good to have Balzic back, because the Serbo-Italian cop is one of the great characters in contemporary fiction.".Family Values" may be Constantine's best novel to date". -- Richard Dyer, Boston Globe"It's a tale told mostly in dialogue. Wonderful dialogue.

Wonderful, cranky, old Mario. Good to have him out of mothballs". -- David Delman, Philadelphia Inquirer"In the course of 12 novels starring police chief Mario Balzic, K. C. Constantine has given mystery fans tight, character-driven novels set in thefictional blue-collar mining town of Rocksburg, PA. His latest, "Family Values", deserves the same kind of praise and a larger audience yet". -- Mary Cannon Trone, Minneapolis Star Tribune.