DEAD OF WINTER, Stephen Mack Jones’ third August Snow novel, is at heart a long, violent love letter to the city of Detroit, warts and roses and all. Jones may currently live in a suburb of Detroit, but this latest installment displays an insider’s familiarity with a once-promising city gleaned from traversing streets where the busses don’t run and one is bound to rub elbows (and possibly more) with folks who many would wisely cross the street to avoid.

August Snow is an ex-Detroit cop who came out the winner of a wrongful termination lawsuit and uses his well-earned gain to play Robin Hood of sorts. He finds himself invited to a meeting at Authentico Foods, a Detroit institution known for manufacturing top-grade Mexican food items. Ronaldo Ochoa, the founder and owner, knew August’s deceased father and was his benefactor as a child. In the here and now, Ochoa is near death and is being pressured to sell his business to a shadowy entity with an old gambling debt leveraged against him. Ochoa wants August to buy Authentico Foods, knowing that he will keep the current employees working. Running a food manufacturing company is way outside of August’s considerable wheelhouse, but he’s concerned about its loss and the effect it will have on his neighborhood and city.

"DEAD OF WINTER is not just explosions and fisticuffs.... [O]ne should come to this story for the action and stay for the scenery and the characters."

Ochoa’s daughter and a shady attorney do not share Ochoa’s plans to keep his business afloat after his death. They are more inclined to take outside money and let the chips fall where they may, so to speak. Thus they oppose any deal that would involve August. Things become personal for August when Ochoa dies, but not of natural causes, and his godfather is seriously injured in the mix. August does what he does best --- kicking down doors and getting information from both sides of the street. He learns soon enough that there are layers to the planned acquisition of Ochoa’s property that go as high as the Detroit city government, and well beyond the boundaries of the United States.

August has a deep bench of friends whose loyalty matches his, and some of them can bring a level of violence to a party that will paint the walls red. He is not bulletproof, but he will not hesitate to wade deeply into a situation to protect his own or go literally to the ends of the earth --- or a hemisphere, anyway --- to enact vengeance if he must, even at the risk of his own life.

DEAD OF WINTER is not just explosions and fisticuffs. Jones takes August on a culinary tour of Detroit, which will have some readers (including this one) checking their Waze app to see if a drive of a few hours to the city for lunch or dinner is feasible. If there is a downer to the book, it is the somewhat ham-handed “woke” sledgehammering that permeates it from beginning to end. Most of it comes from August, whose net worth of eight figures somewhat offsets any injustices that he might have endured. That said, one should come to this story for the action and stay for the scenery and the characters.