Drink the Tea Book

Willis Gidney is a born liar and rip-off artist, an expert at the scam. Growing up without parents or a home, by age twelve he is a successful young man, running his own small empire, until he meets Shadrack Davies. That’s Captain Shadrack Davies, of the D.C. Police. Davies wants to reform Gidney and becomes his foster father. Though he tries not to, Gidney learns a small amount of ethics from Shad—-just enough to bother a kid from the streets for the rest of his life.

Now Gidney is a PI, walking those same streets. So it's no surprise that when his closest friend, jazz saxophonist Steps Jackson, asks Gidney to find his missing daughter, Gidney is compelled to say yes—-even though she's been missing for twenty-five years. He finds a woman who may be the girl’s mother—and within hours she turns up dead. The police accuse Gidney of the murder and throw him in jail.

Maybe Gidney should quit while he’s behind. But when his investigation puts him up against a ruthless multinational corporation, a two-faced congressman, and a young woman desperate to conceal her past, Gidney has no time left for second thoughts. In fact, he may have no time left at all.

Thomas Kaufman is a winner of the PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Competition. His debut novel, Drink the Tea, which boasts an original PI and an engaging cast of characters, adds a fresh perspective to the genre.

Publishers Weekly

Kaufman, the winner of the PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Competition, introduces an unusual PI, a former foster child, in his impressive debut. Too often in mystery fiction a character’s difficult upbringing is tacked on, but Willis Gidney bears emotional scars from being abandoned that are both convincing and relevant to the story line.  Jazz great Steps Jackson, a friend of the D.C. gumshoe, hires Gidney to locate his long-lost daughter. Gidney, who normally serves subpoenas, attracts the interest of a creepy private security firm and an ambitious right-wing politician.  After a lead takes him to Colette Andrews, the wife of the former Virginia state attorney general, Colette turns up shot to death, and the police suspect Gidney of having pulled the trigger.  While one coincidental development  will raise eyebrows, Kaufman, a director and cameraman who twice won the Gordon Parks Award for cinematography, pulls off a taut, compelling tale of violence and corruption. (Mar.)