City of Blight - John Wingspread Howell - Bog

City of Blight is a sort of Sopranos meets House of Cards on a local city level, with a great love story thrown in. There is political intrigue, conspiracy, psychological complexity, and a story of lifelong-though mostly unrequited-love. Buffalo is a character in this story told from the point of view of Paul Cappellano who comes back to his two loves after forty years: Buffalo, the Queen City, and Nancy Paradise, former City Queen (Miss Buffalo), and finds himself framed for the murder of one by the corrupt leaders of the other. His cause is taken up by a larger than life lawyer known as "Francisca Lee Bailey" who defends her client by taking on a pervasive network of corruption in the city, and trying her case primarily in the press. As the story unfolds, the scope and severity of this corruption, which includes a vast sex scandal, continues to amaze, as bodies fall and careers implode.