August Heat. A Vivian Kessler Case (en Inglés) - B.A. Montes

Chicago, August 1968. The city is preparing for the Democratic National Convention, but beneath the speeches and police barricades, quieter pressures are already building.

Private investigator Vivian Kessler is asked to locate Eleanor Whitman, a university student who has disappeared from her family's carefully controlled world. What begins as a discreet missing-person inquiry slowly reveals a network of influence, fear, and quiet bargains operating beneath Chicago's public face.

As protests gather downtown and tensions rise across the city, Vivian finds herself pulled into choices that will define the kind of investigator-and the kind of woman she intends to become.

August Heat is a literary noir novella set in 1968 Chicago and serves as both a standalone story and an origin entry in The Kessler Files series.