'Who're you working for then, Warshawski?' 'My cousin.' 'Boom Boom? He's dead.' 'I know. That's why I'm working for him.'

Deadlock, V.I. Warshawksi's second case, involves the huge Great Lakes shipping industry. Once again the subject is murder-this time the 'accidental death' of Boom-Boom Warshawski, an ex-hockey star and V.I.'s beloved cousin, who fell-or was pushed-off a rain-slicked pier on Chicago's busy waterfront. Convinced that Boom-Boom was in fact killed because of information he had uncovered about criminal doings on the shipping lines, V.I. begins a long and frustrating search for her cousin's murderer. In the course of an investigation that takes her to a remote Canadian port city and a calamitous trip on a sabotaged freighter, V.I. finds all too many possible candidates for the killer, including a grain company executive involved in extortion; and rival heads of two shippers, one of whom is being blackmailed for his criminal past; a hockey player whose specialty is graft; and Boom-Boom's lover, an icily beautiful dancer with expensive tastes in men and merchandise.