It was around noon and I was asleep when the phone rang. I yawned, lit a cigarette, answered it. After coming home drunk, insurance man Don Barshter unintentionally kills his wife. Unwilling to face the consequences, Barshter leaves town and creates a new identity: Nathaniel Crowley, ferocious up-and-comer in the New York mob. But can he find safety in the skin of another man? Or is he still just as shortsighted and unsteady as he always was? Written in 1960 but first published in 2016, this early crime novel shows that MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block was already a master of hard-edged noir.