Cranks and Shadows is a 1995 crime novel by the American writer K. C. Constantine[1] set in 1990s Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rust Belt town in Western Pennsylvania, modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh.

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.

[2] The novel opens with Balzic being told to lay off five members of his police department.

Balzic confronts members of the Conemaugh Foundation, a clandestine organization out to seize control of Rocksburg.

You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.See guidelines for writing about novels.