The Tuitions

Deception and greed are only the beginning when an author stumbles upon criminal behavior surrounding people drowning in tuition payments and student loans--and the companies giving out those student loans...

--Marcus Stevens is holed up in his favorite bar, where he likes to write when not working from his home office, when he is pulled into criminal behavior lurking behind the student loans private companies are 'awarding' parents and students to combat the rising costs of college education. Encouraged by another bar patron, Henry Goodman, the author begins writing a series entitled 'The American Dream' detailing questionable practices surrounding those private student loans and the companies behind them. Henry Goodman is in the bar during the day because he needs a place to be while pretending to go each day to the job he lost months ago. He and his wife, Cocoa, are struggling to keep their five children in the expensive colleges Cocoa enjoys name dropping to family, friends and neighbors. While Cocoa scrambles to come up with the monthly payments those tuitions demand, her husband and the author he has befriended unearth a scandal of fraud, money laundering, secretive lurid parties and murder reaching beyond the local politicians in Chicago all the way to the nation's capital. As the unofficial investigation takes on speed hard-nosed detective Elliot Greer and his partner, Tristan Landry, are swept up in cover-ups and corruption as far-reaching in the Windy City as the Erie Street neighborhood from 'Sunday Dinner' to the lush penthouses overlooking the Magnificent Mile. Too late, Marcus Stevens and the others realize their findings just might cost them everything...