Voice with no echo

Tensions are running high in picturesque Lake Holly, New York, with increased raids and deportations impacting the immigrant community, and now the suspicious death of the tough-on-crime district attorney's much-younger new wife. Complicating things further, the couple's undocumented maid is missing. Is she a witness? Another victim? Or even the killer? In this fifth series outing, Detective Jimmy Vega must navigate federal agents, immigrant-rights groups, police, and political power brokers in his search for the truth. The novel is at its best when it focuses on the human factor, treating with empathy the plight of one immigrant family. But Chazin seems unwilling to fully explore the complex issue, and expected conversations on more controversial aspects of current immigration policy, such as family separation, never occur. The debate is abruptly left at a half-hearted "agree to disagree" stalemate while the plot is derailed by an overly convoluted conspiracy. Overall, a well-intentioned but flawed effort from an author whose previous novel in this series, A Place in the Wind (2017), more successfully integrated social issues with a crime story.

At the start of Chazin's touching and disturbing fifth Jimmy Vega mystery (after 2019's A Place in the Wind), Holocaust survivor Max Zimmerman asks his friend Det. Jimmy Vega to help his synagogue's longtime Salvadoran handyman, Edgar Aviles, whose temporary legal status has been rescinded. Edgar faces deportation, even though his wife is too ill to work and his son has leukemia. Jimmy can only refer Edgar to his girlfriend, Adele Figueroa, the director of an immigrant outreach center. Edgar's case takes an unexpected turn when Jimmy is assigned to investigate the apparent suicide of Talia Crowley, the DA's wife, found hanged in the basement of the couple's Lake Holly, N.Y., mansion. Talia's illegal immigrant housekeeper, who's Edgar's niece, has gone missing. Meanwhile, Jimmy must work with his estranged half-sister, ICE agent Michelle Vega-Lopez, whose determined attempts to reestablish bonds force Jimmy to confront his own painful past. This timely tale of the plight of immigrants whose uncertain status makes them vulnerable to abuse offers no easy answers. Chazin smoothly integrates complex social issues into a satisfying whodunit. Agent: Stephany Evans, Ayesha Pande Literary. (Apr.)

Two half siblings separated by time and past events forge a better relationship as they work a complex case. County cop Jimmy Vega is recovering from several cases that almost ended his career. Doing a mitzvah for his girlfriend's elderly neighbor, Holocaust survivor Max Zimmerman, involves him with Edgar Aviles, the handyman at the local synagogue, who's about to be deported to El Salvador despite mitigating circumstances. Max wants to give Edgar sanctuary while his lawyer and his niece, Lissette, who works as a housekeeper for district attorney Glen Crowley, see if they can help. Meanwhile, Jimmy's girlfriend, Adele Figueroa, a Harvard-educated lawyer who runs the immigrant aid center La Casa, also pitches in despite the long odds. Then Jimmy gets a call from a neighboring police department seeking his expertise in a possible case of suicide. The dead woman is Talia Crowley, the DA's second wife. The whole case seems off to Jimmy from the start, but he faces enormous pressure to close it out, especially since Crowley has an alibi. Then Lissette vanishes, leaving behind only a wallet with a picture of two children. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sends in agent Michelle Carmelita Vega-Lopez, the half sister Jimmy has rarely seen since childhood, when he was growing up in the Bronx in the care of his mother and grandmother. Jimmy has had no particular feelings for Michelle ever since his father left his mother for hers, and he still has nightmares and unresolved issues from his early life. As Aviles stubbornly refuses to disclose information that might harm his family, Jimmy ruffles feathers in several police departments by persisting in his theory that Talia was murdered. Despite Jimmy's and Michelle's very different outlooks on deportations, she uses her contacts in ICE to uncover a nefarious scheme related to Talia's murder. The excellent mystery is almost upstaged by an anguished tale of old hurts and ripped-from-the-headlines political quarrels. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.