Gangster Nation

September 2001: two years since legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Las Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. For David, everything is coming up gold: temple membership is on the rise, the new school is raking it in, and the mortuary and cemetery, where he launders bodies for the mob, is minting cash. But Sal wants out. He's got money stashed all over the city. If he makes it through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, he'll have enough to slip away, grab his wife and kid and start afresh. Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for a casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his time off stalking members of The Family, looking to avenge his former partner's murder. So when Sal's cousin stumbles into the casino, Matthew takes the law into his own hands, starting a chain of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in on him. Gangster Nation is a page-turning examination of the seedy foundations of American life. With the wit and gritty glamour that defines his writing, Goldberg traces how the things we value most in our lives - home, health, even our spirituality - have been built on the enterprises of criminals.

Tod Goldberg is the author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; The House of Secrets, which he co-authored with Brad Meltzer; and the crime- tinged novels Living Dead Girl, an LA Times Book Prize finalist, and Fake Liar Cheat, plus five novels in the popular Burn Notice series. He is also the author of the story collection Simplify, a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize, and Other Resort Cities. His essays, journalism, and criticism have appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, Las Vegas Weekly, and Best American Essays, and have won five Nevada Press Association Awards. He lives in Indio, California, where he directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside.