Mob Rules (The Jeff Trask Kansas City Files 1)

Former Federal Prosecutor Charles Ambrose, writing under the pen name of Marc Rainer, has a dynamic way of blending his true life trial experiences with the fictional world of Jeff Trask to amp up the excitement of criminal investigation. He even notes at the end of the story which scenes were taken directly from reality and proves the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. This includes the scene below and the opening scene on an airplane flight with a suspected drug dealer among the passengers. Scenes which might have appeared to be over the top turned out to be part of actual events.

These stories have an excellent mixture of the investigation and prosecution which details what truly goes into finding the criminals, determining guilt and then establishing that guilt in a way which would allow the prosecutors to obtain a verdict and a sentencing in a court of law.

I had forgotten that at the end of Death Votes Last that our main character, Jeff Trask, had resigned from the Federal Prosecutor’s office after having enough of Washington D.C. It was not until we joined Jeff in this story on the way to his job interview in Kansas City that I recalled that change in the storyline. So Mob Rules is actual more of a spin-off of the original Jeff Trask Criminal Investigation series and is now The Kansas City Files. I had a moment of disappointment because I enjoy stories when we build our investigative team over the course of the books and we left our team behind in Washington. But as Jeff joins the Kansas City US Attorney’s Office as their new Senior Litigation Counsel, he joins a new task force including Federal and local investigators and we quickly get to know our new team who all work together to capture criminals, instead of the usually stories of pissing matches between local and federal investigations. It will take time to get to know all the new players but the story had a great dynamic between this new group already.

Right from the start, Jeff is brought in to head the task force to go up against the local mob family. The local mafioso have appeared to turn away from their usual endeavors and opened juice bars which feature nude dances. Since there is no alcohol, investigators have no excuses for coming in and keeping tabs on these bars the way they would if they needed license to distribute alcohol. So the mob is free to cook their books and conduct other business behind their closed doors. Yet there is word that some of the junior mobsters are becoming entrepreneurs and dealing drugs for extra income. As if supplying heroin to the young and desperate for Kansas City isn’t bad enough, this heroin in laced with fentanyl and people are dying.

Jeff and the task force need to do more than know where the drugs are, they need to follow the trail all the way from supplier to distributors and collect the evidence to prove that guilt to a jury. Jeff and his team aren’t the only ones the dealers need to worry about either. On one hand, we have a local woman who lost her only son to this deadly laced drug and she wants to make the mob pay for their crimes. On the other hand, the local Don is very happy with the profits for his juice bars and he doesn’t want anyone to mess up his good thing with something that would bring cops sniffing around. He also wouldn’t be happy to find out that those dealers weren’t kicking their profits up the chain into his pocket like they are supposed to.

Jeff and his team working hard to follow the drugs but they need to hurry and finish their investigation and lock down their evidence before someone else gets to their drug dealers before they do. This story was tension filled wondering if Jeff would take down the drug ring before someone else would take them out.

I really enjoy the Jeff Trask Crime Drama series and am looking forward to seeing what other investigations the Kansas City Files will bring to the table.