Sunshine Enemies

New York: The Mysterious Press, 1990. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Bradley Clark (Jacket illustration). [6], 167, [3] pages. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Inscription reads. To Stan Sherman, Best wished K.C. Constantine. This Mario Balzic novel. Rocksburg Police Chief Mario Balzic must probe a tangle of reluctant witnesses, local mob figures, and a not-so-holy minister when a brutal murder occurs in the parking lot of a controversial pornography shop. Carl Constantine Kosak (1934 - March 23, 2023), better known by the pen name K. C. Constantine, was an American mystery author. He was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and served in the Marines in the early 1950s. He was an alumnus of Westminster College. Kosak turned to writing full-time in 1993. His most famous creation is Mario Balzic, police chief in fictional Rocksburg, Pennsylvania. Rocksburg is a by-product of Kosak's hometown McKees Rocks, as well as the nearby cities Greensburg and Johnstown. Kosak is much more interested in the people in his novels than the actual mystery, and his later novels become ever more philosophical. In 1989 Constantine was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel for the Mario Balzic novel Joey's Case. In 1999 Booklist ranked Blood Mud among the year's best crime novels. In May 2011, Kosak appeared in person for the first time at the 16th annual Festival of Mystery held at the Greek Orthodox Church in Oakmont, signing his books and giving a live interview. Kosak died on March 23, 2023, at the age of 88. Mysterious Press announced they would be publishing a final novel—more than twenty years after his last publication—entitled Another Day's Pain. The novel opens with a Lutheran minister complaining about a pornography ship that recently opened at the edge of town. Next a brutal knife murder happens in the shop's parking lot. All of this prompts Balzic the police chief to work the case, digging up reluctant witnesses and asking questions. Sunshine Enemies is a crime novel by the American writer K. C. Constantine set in 1980s Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rust Belt town in Western Pennsylvania. Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, middle-aged, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force. It is the ninth book in the 17-volume Mario Balzic Detective Mystery Series.