This is book 11 of the "Vlad Taltos" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

This one was known as Gigolo while being written. (The working titles generally have nothing to do with the content, just what can be done with the words or the sounds.)

Vlad goes back East, to get away from the Empire, kill some time, and incidentally find out about Cawti's family.

So this is almost a whole new set of world-building; we haven't seen much of the East.

He starts in a paper-milling town that appears to have connections. And of course, when he starts turning over rocks, he finds things are weird. It occurs to me that this is the flip side (if I may) of the trope in detective stories where people are acting suspicious trying to conceal things that turn out to have nothing to do with the crime. Well, when Vlad comes in as an outsider and starts asking questions, things look really weird.