Award-winning author Matt Cost brings us back to Brooklyn in the Roaring '20s and introduces us to Hungarian PI, 8 Ballo, who is hired to find the daughter of a wealthy businessman. The search will lead him to cross paths with Dorothy Parker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Bugsy Siegel, Babe Ruth, and many more as he tries to uncover why Velma went awry.
8 Ballo's mother was certain he was going to be born a girl, but when he comes out a boy, she writes down simply the number 8, as he has seven older siblings. She meant to change it to a real name at some point but never got around to it.
Now, in his mid-thirties, 8 is a college educated man, a veteran of the Great War, jilted in love, and has his own private investigator business. He enjoys his friends, a good book, jazz music, and a very simple life. When he is hired to find the young flapper daughter of a German businessman, life suddenly becomes much more complicated.
Author Biography:
Matt Cost (aka Matthew Langdon Cost) is the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of the Mainely Mystery series. The first book, Mainely Power, was selected as the Maine Humanities Council Read ME Fiction Book of 2020. This was followed by Mainely Fear, Mainely Money, and Mainely Angst. I Am Cuba: Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution was his first traditionally published novel. His other historical novels are Love in a Time of Hate (August 2021), and At Every Hazard (August 2022). Cost is also the author of the Clay Wolfe / Port Essex Mysteries, Wolfe Trap, Mind Trap, Mouse Trap (April 2022), and Cosmic Trap, to be published by Encircle in December, 2022. Cost's love of histories and mysteries is combined in the novel, Velma Gone Awry, book one in his new series featuring private eye, 8 Ballo, set in Brooklyn, 1923.Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014, he was released and he began writing. And that's what he does: he writes histories and mysteries. Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing. For the latest news, follow Matt Cost-Author on Facebook, and on Instagram @mlangdoncost.
