Fields Where They Lay (A Junior Bender Mystery) - Timothy Hallinan

Junior Bender, burglar extraordinaire, finds himself stuck inside the Edgerton Mall at Christmas. Edgerton isn''t exactly the epicentre of holiday cheer. The mall is a fossil of an industry in decline; many of its stores are closed, and to make matters worse, there is a rampant shoplifting problem. The murderous Russian mobster who owns the place hires Junior - under threat - to solve the shoplifting problem. But Junior''s surveillance operation doesn''t go well: as Christmas Eve approaches, two people are dead and it''s obvious that shoplifting is the least of the mall''s problems.