The Killing Floor Blues

Daniel Faust has outmaneuvered mob bosses, demons, and worse—but the Iceberg might finally be the trap he can't con his way out of. Framed for murder and dropped into a privately-owned desert prison where the guards are as dangerous as the inmates, Faust is cut off from his magic, his allies, and every advantage he's ever relied on. Meanwhile, Las Vegas—the city he calls home—is being carved up by outside forces who are counting on him staying locked away. Schaefer builds genuine tension here: the stakes are personal, the clock is real, and the cost of failure lands on people Faust actually cares about.

What makes this entry in the Daniel Faust series particularly satisfying is how Schaefer uses the prison setting to strip his protagonist down to fundamentals. Without the usual bag of tricks, readers get to see exactly how sharp Faust actually is—how he reads people, builds alliances under pressure, and finds angles in seemingly airless situations. The prose moves fast but never cuts corners on character, and the confined setting creates a focused, almost claustrophobic momentum that carries through to the final pages.