Dan Reles has a new house, a beautiful wife, a son, and a  great career as head of Austin Homicide. That is, until Dan’s ex-con father—a Mafia legbreaker who’s spent the last twenty years on the run—shows up on Dan’s doorstep with an escaped prostitute and a stolen car, and Dan gets caught on the wrong end of a mob vendetta.

Sam Zelig is the last of the Jewish mob bosses, a giant of a man with boundless rage and a passion for pain—other people’s pain. Zelig chases the old man  to Austin to retrieve his stolen girl and extract his pound of flesh. But when Dan’s father won’t hand over the girl,  Sam Z takes the city itself hostage, forcing Dan to run the gauntlet: a trial by fire and water, a hail of bullets, a bridge embankment, and one very angry woodchipper.

Dan has to choose between his new family, his father, and the town he’s sworn to protect.



Part Damon Runyon, part James Ellroy, Michael Simon paints “an authentic noir landscape and peoples it with equally authentic characters—tarnished cops and haunted hookers,” writing with a rhythm and a soulfulness that raise the bar on  crime fiction. The fiery result is what Thomas Kelly, author of Empire Rising, called “a great rollicking yarn about good guys and bad guys in many splendid shades of gray.” Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland  and Paradise Alley called it “a terrific detective story, smart, dark, and acidly funny.” And Stuart Kaminsky says, “Michael Simon is a masterful teller of tales.”

Fast paced and suspenseful, THE LAST JEW STANDING thrills to the very last minute.



Michael Simon is a former actor and Texas probation officer. He has taught at Brooklyn College and New York University. He lives in New York City.