GONE TO DUST

Gone to Dust, like Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series and Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie, has a protagonist in Nils Shapiro who embodies the winning combination of dysfunction, dark humor and heart.

Irreverent Jewish private investigator Nils Shapiro, is just trying to stay warm, get over his divorce and solve a murder that has no usable evidence. The police department of Edina, Minnesota is stymied when they discover a murder victim covered in the dirt and dust of emptied vacuum cleaner bags. The dirt contains the DNA of thousands of people and has covered the killer's forensic trail.
Not knowing where to begin, Edina Police Detective Ellegaard hires an ex- colleague turned PI, Nils Shapiro. While the police investigate following standard procedure, Nils takes a less direct route. Discoving that both the victim and the lead suspect are tied to Minnesota's Somali community and somehow to the FBI as well. Trying to stay one step ahead of the FBI, Nils and Detective Ellegaard are forced to take their investigation underground, where the case grows as murky as the contents of the vacuum cleaner bags.
Only Nil's hard-learned lessons about love and the pain left in its wake give him the clarity to solve the crime.