Nick J. Stika

Bag of Knives: a Novel Nick J. Stika

Bag Of Knives is a mystery about two young men, Skits and Eddie, who grew up together in Chicago, IL. They met at Gino's Guitar Shop as boys, became friends and formed a band called Bag Of Knives. But due to some bad circumstances as they grew in to adulthood, Bag Of Knives was their only source of income. Gino Vincent, the owner of the shop, had taken the boys under his wing and groomed them in to the professionals they became. They played the area extensively and gained a great deal of popularity until they became the top drawing act in the Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin music circuits, and were even opening concerts for touring national acts.
One night at a packed venue in Milwaukee, they were approached by two men in trench coats from the musicians' union. When the band couldn't produce union cards, they were shut down and put out of business. The band split up and Skits and Eddie found themselves unemployed, evicted and homeless. They decide to call on Gino for help. He had helped them before, surely he would help again. Without money or transportation, they decided to walk to Gino's Guitar Shop, which was located on the opposite corner of the city from where they were. On the third day of their walk in the freezing Chicago winter, they stumbled across Irma's Soup Kitchen. Irma sensed they were not typical homeless people, so she took them in and nursed them back to health. While helping out in the soup kitchen, they began hearing rumors that other bands had suffered the same fate as they had and then they heard two women talking about a television evangelist named Billy Paladin, a man who was on a quest to abolish rock and roll. They blew it off as some crackpot scheme until they finally got to Gino's Guitar Shop only to learn that Gino was somehow involved with this man, Billy Paladin. Since Gino ran the biggest guitar shop in the Midwest and catered to rock and roll musicians, this connection made no sense. Skits took it upon h