Review by Booklist Review
Russell Avery, a crime reporter for Newark's only daily newspaper, gets his pink slip another casualty of the demise of print but uses his contacts on the Newark PD to fast-track a PI license. These days, his primary source of income is helping Newark cops dodge internal investigations, often involving accusations of excessive force. But when a friend puts him in touch with Austin Mathis, Avery senses a chance to do the right thing. Austin's son, Kevin, may have been killed because he had a video of a friend being murdered by police. Avery looks into Kevin's official brushes with law enforcement and sees a kid with no violent encounters, only a few minor possession arrests for which he served surprisingly little time. As Avery canvasses his gang contacts to see if Kevin recently upped his game, he finds he's being tailed by the same cops he once thought of as friends. Avery wants to help his client, avoid alienating his cop friends, and keep Kevin's video from going viral and setting Newark on fire. This is the first novel for Queally, an award-winning crime reporter. The use-of-force theme is sadly contemporary, and Queally knows all the players and their world: cops, lawyers, guns, and the drug trade. An excellent debut from a strong new voice in crime fiction.--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2020 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Crime reporter Queally makes his impressive fiction debut with a hard-hitting crime novel set in Newark, N.J. PI Russell Avery, a once idealistic white journalist bounced from his newspaper job, now fixes things for screwed-up cops. When Keyonna Jackson, a black social justice activist who serves as Avery's conscience, spurs him into probing the shooting death of black teenager Kevin Mathis, a suspected drug dealer, Avery plunges into a miasma of police corruption and reconnects with former girlfriend Dina , a reporter bent on unmasking crooked cops. The deeper he investigates, the more Avery becomes convinced that he's been looking for heroes and villains in a city that breeds only survivors--and where protecting and serving are too often reduced to doing evil so that good may result. This scalding exposé of human failures, in which friendships go tragically sour, powerfully updates Raymond Chandler's mean streets. Queally is definitely a writer to watch. Agent: James McGowan, BookEnds Literary. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An investigation into the death of a drug dealer uncovers an ugly police conspiracy.Private Investigator Russell Avery generally makes his living as a "handyman" for the Newark police, fixing a variety of complaints and misunderstandings. When social activist Keyonna Jackson asks him to look into the shooting death of Kevin Mathis, a teenage street-level dealer, he is reluctant because, well, drug dealers get shot. But Avery learns Mathis had a cellphone with a video of the police shooting of his friend Luis Becerra, raising the possibility that Mathis was killed by police seeking to suppress the recording, and though justice for Mathis might involve investigating the hands that feed him, Avery decides to take the case. After the video is made public and becomes the cause of enduring Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Avery is pulled in several directions: Police officials tell him he is following false leads and threaten his PI license; his ex-girlfriend Dina, who is a reporter, wants to run a story that may be incomplete; Keyonna sees the shootings as symptoms of social injustice, regardless of the facts; and Avery's own loyalties and friendships within the police department are strained. Overall, the various factions neatly represent public voices in the broader discussion of crime and responsibility, and to that degree the novel is formulaic. If the minor characters lack authenticity and their dialogue all sounds similar, Avery's first-person voice is strong and distinct, and his moral quandaries are real and immediate.A creditable debut thriller, if a little too neat. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
