A brutal legacy. A vanished father. A city that never forgets: 1922, Albany, New York. Four years after a young boxer’s lifeless body was pulled from the Hudson River, no one has answered for his death. The case has long gone cold—until Trevor Ellison, a fellow boxer, begins to suspect the murder is tied to his own father’s mysterious disappearance soon afterward.
Desperate for clarity, Trevor hires private investigator Sloan Sheppard. A boxer himself, Sloan navigates a city embroiled in clandestine activity, where boxing clubs moonlight as political backrooms, speakeasies flourish behind boarded up storefronts, and silence can be bought as easily as a drink. With corruption, Prohibition, flappers, and fists flying inside and outside the ring, Sloan must decipher which blows were part of the match—and which were meant to kill.
The Murderer Is Always with Us is a historical mystery steeped in noir atmosphere, where the city’s underworld isn’t just a backdrop—it’s the fight itself. And with each step closer to the truth, Sloan Sheppard edges deeper into a past someone will do anything to keep buried.