Valentine Cardinale

The West Side Kid: a Novel Valentine Cardinale

Lorne Bennett, a movie star known as "The West Side Kid" to his fans, is a wanted man. When his thirty-one-year-old wife Aurora is found murdered in their elegant Manhattan apartment, he comes under suspicion and flees, leaving his four-month-old daughter Laura behind. Twenty-two years later, he's still on the run, the prime suspect in the notorious cold case. When a freak car accident throws him into the spotlight, he feels forced to take off again after enjoying five relatively peaceful years under the radar in Arizona. Meanwhile, Laura, a copywriter now living in New York City, has become obsessed with learning as much as she can about her parents and what happened the night her mother was murdered. Against the advice of police and relatives, and threats from mysterious sources, she launches her own investigation into the crime. With help from a few unlikely but trusted companions, she gradually starts putting the pieces together. But the more she learns, the more her life and the lives of others are endangered.