Family Values

Family Values is a crime novel by the American writer K. C. Constantine set in 1990s Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rust Belt town in Western Pennsylvania, modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh. Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force. The novel opens with Balzic being lured out of his retirement with an offer: investigate a 17-year-old murder that just gets stranger as time passes in exchange for the title of Special Investigator, state credentials, and thirty-five dollars an hour. It is the thirteenth book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series.