A violent confrontation on the day Adrian-who suffered mightily in prison, even more than the typical cop does behind bars-sends Gideon to the hospital casts the newly paroled ex-detective in an even more negative light. Gideon is hell-bent on revenge and sees Adrian as his prime target. As the young officer who discovered Julia’s body, Elizabeth found herself forever tethered to the dead woman’s son, then only a year old, and stayed in touch, helping raise him from afar as his own father fell into a state of drunken disrepair. One of the few members of the police force who believed Adrian didn’t kill Julia Strange all those years ago, despite heaps of forensic evidence, Elizabeth also shares a unique bond with Julia’s son, the now adolescent Gideon Strange. When word comes through that ex-cop Adrian Wall is being released from prison after a thirteen-year stint for a murder he claims he didn’t commit, Elizabeth’s world continues to spin dangerously out of control. Excessive force charges loom large but Elizabeth, who’s always been a tough nut to crack even before the incident, isolates herself even further from fellow cops, including her partner, Detective Charlie Beckett.
The public and her own department aren’t sure whether she’s a killer or a savior, especially since she refuses to speak directly about the incident other than to give the bare minimum of details, while Channing remains silent. Any police shooting is worthy of investigation but Elizabeth didn’t just shoot the men, who happened to be black (she’s white), once or twice: she emptied her entire clip, shooting the pair a total of eighteen times.
The multipronged story revolves around a host of characters but Hart’s most intriguing creation-and his first female protagonist to date-is Detective Elizabeth Black, who’s grappling with the aftermath of a brutal shooting where she killed two men who were holding eighteen-year-old Channing Shore hostage while they took turns raping her. $27.99After a five-year absence, John Hart is back at it, returning to his North Carolina roots and once again mixing crime fiction with just a hint of the Southern Gothic in this tale of long-buried secrets and the search for redemption-and questioning whether it’s even worth it if we find it.
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