LA detective, Drew Steele, takes on a new case while still recovering from life-threatening wounds he suffered in an IED explosion in Iraq where he was working for "the company" as a private contractor. The doctors told him he would never walk again, but he proved them wrong. After multiple surgeries, he is able to walk again using a high-tech prosthetic foot (which provides a convenient place to hide a tiny gun). Although he walks with a limp, don't call him a cripple; he's still one of the most successful and sought-after detectives in LA.
His first case back in LA seems routine - a missing Las Vegas casino boss - and unrelated to what he was doing in Iraq, but the case turns decidedly dangerous when the missing man turns up dead with a strange message burned into the flesh of his forehead. When the autopsy reveals a grisly surprise in the dead man's stomach, Steele suspects it was put there to suggest the murder is somehow connected to drug trafficking in Crueltown, the criminal hideout in a toxic swamp near the LA-harbor where police are not allowed. But is Crueltown really at the center of this mystery, or is it one of his old enemies trying to draw him into a deadly trap? Crueltown is a Noir murder mystery that pits two brilliant minds against each other in a life and death struggle against a backdrop of the darker side of LA and Vegas.