This collection of three interconnected novellas follows each generation of the iconic Swagger family. In “City of Meat,” Charles Swagger is on the hunt for notorious bank robber Baby Face Nelson when he traces a tip to the Chicago stock yards. While there, he’s brutally assaulted and discovers that the madman who attacked him is involved in a nearby narcotics ring. Earl Swagger investigates a violent bank robbery in “Johnny Tuesday” that left two dead and a fortune missing in small-town Maryland. At every turn, however, he’s met with silence and hostility from the townsfolk. Finally, in “Five Dolls for the Gut Hook,” a 32-year-old Bob Lee Swagger is back from Vietnam nearly broken over good men lost for nothing. But one afternoon he’s wakened from his nightmares by two men with a problem.