Simple

June 18, 2012
In Edgar-finalist George’s well-constructed sixth police procedural featuring Pittsburgh homicide detective Richard Christie (after 2011’s Hideout), Commander Christie and his crew look into the relatively bloodless murder of beautiful paralegal Cassie Price. Suspicion immediately falls on handyman Cal Hathaway, who discovered the body in the victim’s apartment. Suspicion later falls on gubernatorial candidate Michael Connolly, who was having a clandestine affair with Price that might have ruined his candidacy. Political party organizer Todd Simon was supposed to take care of the problem. Despite a confession by a confused Hathaway, Christie senses something wrong, and insists on a closer examination of the case. Christie and company patiently weed through endless interviews, trace evidence, and the complex relationships of many flawed characters, including the malleable Hathaway, weak-willed Connolly, and cocky Simon, who scrambles to stay ahead of the investigation. Series fans should be pleased. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency.

Starred review from August 1, 2012
George's Pittsburgh cops (Hideout, 2011, etc.) investigate a robbery-murder that's a lot less routine and more sordid than it looks. Gubernatorial hopeful Michael Connolly can't keep his hands off Cassie Price, a new paralegal in his father's law firm. But as he tells Todd Simon, his campaign manager, his need to maintain a squeaky-clean family image means that he can't acknowledge her either. So Simon takes Cassie out for a margarita to find out how dangerous she is. By next morning, she's no danger at all, because she's been killed in the house she's been fixing up in the low-income neighborhood of Oakland. Witness accounts and other evidence send Detectives Coleson and McGranahan to Cal Hathaway, the son of the Connolly housekeeper. Damaged as a child by a concussion and subject to blackouts, Cal seems tailor-made for the role of Cassie's killer, and after hours of interrogation, he says he did it, or he didn't, or he can't remember. That's good enough for the cops, who lock him up and get ready to move on. But Cmdr. Richard Christie, dissatisfied with the case against Cal, keeps playing devil's advocate, urging that Detectives John Potocki and Colleen Greer look at other scenarios and other suspects. As they painstakingly build a second case against an unsurprising suspect, Cal makes friends and enemies in jail, raising the distinct possibility that even if the police arrest someone else, his vindication will be posthumous. George's all-too-familiar story is so richly observed, subtly characterized, precisely written--her syncopated paragraphs are a special delight--and successful in its avoidance of genre cliches that you'd swear you were reading the first police procedural ever written.

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Starred review from July 1, 2012
The case seems simple from the start. When Cassie Price is strangled in her home, handyman Cal Hathaway, who found the body, soon confesses to the crime. But as the reader knows from early on, Cassie, a beautiful and promising paralegal about to enter law school, was having an affair with her law firm boss, married gubernatorial candidate and golden boy Mike Connolly, whose handlers considered Cassie unreliable. Pittsburgh PD Homicide Unit Commander Richard Christie, a self-confessed meddler, is troubled by the confession obtained (and soon recanted) after hours of questioning from a man who suffers from brain damage and blackouts, the results of a childhood beating. So the investigation starts anew, led by Christie; his partner, Artie Dolan; and the team of Colleen Greer and John Potocki, whose ever-closer personal relationship is leading to their professional breakup. What most distinguishes this police procedural, the sixth in its series, after Hideout (2011), is its fully realized cast of characters, a close-knit group of detectives who deal with shades of gray in crime solving. George's deft prose, skillful plotting, and winning characters are reminiscent of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series, and her fiction is almost as praiseworthy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)