THE FALL-DOWN ARTIST

Carroll Dorsey's been on the run all his life, it seems, from his political kingmaker father: He quit law school, enlisted in the army, and ended up in what Martin Dorsey considers a dead-end job as a freelance insurance investigator. But now things are looking up: Ray Corso, claims manager at Fidelity Casualty, has been throwing a lot of insurance-fraud cases Dorsey's way; Dorsey's found enough links among a few of those cases to suggest a large- scale conspiracy that could make his reputation; and his father wants to salve his conscience by throwing a big bundle of money at him. But when Dorsey is recognized at a rally of Movement Together, a strong-arm labor group headed by juggernaut priest Father Andrew Jancek, the resulting melee makes him Pittsburgh's most wanted, and least popular, man. Fighting union organizers, political strongmen, his own employers, and Movement Together's forked-tongue lawyer, Jack ``Personal Injury'' Stockman, Dorsey struggles to make a case against Jancek and Stockman before they can put him away for good. A first novel that combines a tangy serving of beer-soaked Pittsburgh atmosphere with a robustly satisfying yarn.