When Lola Jean, Cleveland's most spellbinding go-go dancer, vanishes after her midnight set at the Top Hat Club, her roommate knows something's off. The police shrug it off. So she calls on Rose Rowan. Rose isn't your typical private eye. She's earned degrees in philosophy from the University of Chicago, and is recovering from a dissertation-induced breakdown involving Wittgenstein and a lot of black coffee. Now, she channels her razor-sharp logic into solving the kind of cases that don't fit into tidy syllogisms. But tracking Lola Jean pulls Rose into a smoky labyrinth of retro bars, rogue cops, tech secrets, and Irish mobsters, all hiding behind the faux-bamboo curtain of Cleveland's underground Tiki nightlife. At the center of it all is an unhinged software engineer with a fixation on Tiki "perfection" and a cocktail recipe no one is allowed to see. As Rose follows the trail through velvet shadows and neon lies, she'll have to decide how far she's willing to go-and what she's willing to become-to bring Lola Jean back alive. Smart, stylish, and a little unhinged, Swing, Baby! Swing! is a modern noir with a philosophical twist.

John L. Sheppard is a Persian Gulf War-era Army veteran and the author of a dozen novels, including Small Town Punk (Ig Publishing, 2007). A native and current resident of Cleveland, Ohio, he grew up in Sarasota, Florida. Sheppard holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Florida.