A Death in Arcadia

A Legal Thriller

De: Mike Papantonio

Narrado por: Jeffrey Machado

Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis Returns to Face His Darkest Case Yet—And His Own Haunted Past

When fifteen-year-old Trayvon Clapper is murdered by a guard at Camp B in Florida, his fringe-living mother and boyfriend come to Bergman-Deketomis to file a lawsuit against the facility. Details of the case trigger in Deke memories of his own troubled childhood. As a boy, Deke had no stable parents around him, so he lived with several different families over the years as he grew up, avoiding the foster care system. However, his best friend, Bucky, was not so fortunate. He, too, was killed in a similar facility… and Deke has carried within him a powerful guilt that he has never talked about to anyone, including his wife and children.

Cara Deketomis, Deke’s daughter, is a young lawyer at the firm also working on the case. She comes to recognize the pain her father is feeling but she does not have the ability to break through to the truth. An opportunity in Cara’s personal life also hammers a wedge between father and daughter, adding more stress to the situation.

Meanwhile, investigation into the case uncovers a hidden threat that could endanger everyone at the law firm. A corrupt Congressman, Bob Minds, and his shady colleague, Skyler Bannock, are “fixers” for Phoenix Industries, the parent company of Camp B and other child “protective” services facilities that do anything but that. Minds and Bannock resort to nefarious crimes to make Phoenix’s problems go away, including bribery, intimidation, and even murder. And then there’s Skyler’s brother, Midas, a killer straight out of a nightmare, who does the team’s dirtiest work.

Will the ugly forces behind the scenes wreak lethal havoc on Deke and his team? Will the echo of Deke’s guilt get in the way of a successful legal action against Phoenix? In the tradition of The Middleman, Suspicious Activity, and Inhuman Trafficking, Mike Papantonio takes Deke and his cohorts on a new and different kind of legal gamble, but full of the action and thrills for which he is known.

©2026 Mike Papantonio (P)2026 Skyhorse Audio

Hard Hitting Thriller

The troubled teen industry is alive, operating, and harming children right now. That knowledge hangs over every page of “A Death in Arcadia.”
What separates this book is Deke himself. For the first time in the series, we get deep inside his past — a childhood spent bouncing between families, staying out of the foster care system by sheer will, and carrying a guilt he's never shared with anyone, not even his wife, over the death of his best friend Bucky. That buried grief intersects with the case in ways that feel earned rather than convenient, and watching Deke reckon with gives the novel an emotional weight that lingers long after the last page.

emotional rollercoaster

The way mike is able to explain what happened in the amount of child abuse and was going on his phenomenal. this is definitely not an easy subject to talk about.But this story is definitely eye opening