A brutal legacy. A vanished father. A city that never forgets.
1922, Albany, New York. Four years after a young boxer's lifeless body was pulled from the Hudson River, no one has answered for his death. The case has long gone cold-until Trevor Ellison, a fellow boxer, begins to suspect the murder is tied to his own father's mysterious disappearance soon afterward.
Desperate for clarity, Trevor hires private investigator Sloan Sheppard. A boxer himself, Sloan navigates a city embroiled in clandestine activity, where boxing clubs moonlight as political backrooms, speakeasies flourish behind boarded up storefronts, and silence can be bought as easily as a drink. With corruption, Prohibition, flappers, and fists flying inside and outside the ring, Sloan must decipher which blows were part of the match-and which were meant to kill.
The Murderer Is Always with Us is a taut historical mystery steeped in noir atmosphere, where the city's underworld isn't just a backdrop-it's the fight itself. And with each step closer to the truth, Sloan Sheppard edges deeper into a past someone will do anything to keep buried.