Blow Up the Ashes

"Blow Up the Ashes, Vol 2 of American Mayhem, continues with the story of Pierre Doucet, a Cajun kid who during World War 2 hustles con games on the streets of New Orleans, a lethal world steeped in jambalaya, fancy women, sailors, and criminals. Pierre's skills enable him to become a professional gambler at illegal casinos, and then soon become a hired killer for the mob. When he seeks to escape that life, he finds it not simple to do. With the mob in pursuit because he knows too much, Pierre flees to New York. On a rainy day in a Greenwich Village bookstore a clerk looks vaguely familiar. The clerk is KJ, a girl Pierre last saw when she departed by railroad to college. They unite and together hope to find KJ's runaway daughter, Buckles. Buckles, KJ, and Pierre find each other in San Francisco where Buckles with Pierre's aid plans her revenge on the man who raped her seven years earlier."--