The Castaway Files: $50 A Day Plus Expenses

In the shadows of the city, trouble always finds someone willing to take the case.

The Castaway Files: $50 a Day Plus Expenses gathers four gritty detective stories where the stakes are high, the streets are dangerous, and the truth rarely comes cheap.

• A retired cop investigating a mysterious death on his apartment stairs discovers that the missing instrument of a young cellist may be worth killing for.

• A group of kidnappers discovers that abducting a millionaire’s wife can lead to a payday—or a bloodbath.

• A former operative pulled back into the game hunts the people responsible for a brutal kidnapping, only to uncover a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the underworld.

• And in the city’s darkest alleys, a cat with too many toes and a trenchcoat goes looking for a cop killer—and finds a tragedy no one saw coming.

Hard-boiled, fast-moving, and full of dark humor, these stories carry on the tradition of classic pulp crime fiction while adding a few unexpected twists.

Because in the Castaway Files, every case begins the same way:

Someone is desperate.

Someone is dangerous.

And someone is willing to pay.