No Witness but the Moon

Starred review from August 15, 2016
Given the nation’s current turmoil over police shootings, Chazin’s exceptionally well-written third Jimmy Vega mystery (after 2015’s A Blossom of Bright Light) should be required reading, as it provides profound insight into the shock, horror, and chaos of such a shooting. Homicide cop Vega, an 18-year veteran of the Lake Holly, N.Y., police, has never had to use his service weapon, until a robbery suspect flees into the woods on a wintry December night. Minutes later, Vega has fatally shot an unarmed man. In quick succession, he’s barred from speaking about the incident, suspended from duty, and shunned by colleagues, friends, and family. When the victim is identified, Vega’s life takes a turn for the worse, since both he and his girlfriend, Adele Figueroa, have ties to the man’s family. A media firestorm, community outrage, and threats against Vega and his loved ones force him to dig deep into the shooting’s circumstances. As the pressure mounts, Vega discovers contradictory, labyrinthine evidence that leads to his own past. Leap-off-the-page characters complement the relentless plot. Agent: Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management.

A police officer in upstate New York faces the agony of having killed a man.Taking a call about a home invasion with shots fired, Jimmy Vega rushes to the scene and finds two Latino men running from the house. The one with the gun, homeowner Ricardo Luis, immediately puts down his weapon while Jimmy chases the other one. When the man refuses to put his hands up after they speak in Spanish and turns with a hand jammed into his pocket, Jimmy shoots and kills him. Jimmy is horrified when a search discloses nothing but an old photograph in the dead man's pocket. Soon after he's put on leave until an investigation can clear him, the man is identified as the father of a woman who babysits for Jimmy's girlfriend, attorney Adele Figueroa, who runs La Casa, a Latino community center. The incident unleashes a firestorm of bad publicity. Adele, pressed to condemn Jimmy or lose her job, finds her faith in him wavering, especially when a neighbor at the death scene claims Jimmy executed the man in cold blood. When Jimmy learns that the dead man was the superintendent of the apartment building in the Bronx where his mother lived and died violently, he feels he must investigate. But he's recognized, and only the intervention of an old friend saves him from mob violence. Fighting his fears and his newly sharpened temper, Jimmy links his shooting and his mother's murder to a scheme to extort money from illegal immigrants. Chazin's pulse-pounding procedurals (A Blossom of Bright Light, 2015, etc.) excel at plucking stories from the headlines. This one combines a complex mystery with a heartbreaking look at both sides of police shootings. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2016

Police detective Jimmy Vega returns again in Chazin's (A Blossom of Bright Light) latest novel, which centers on an officer-involved shooting and the effect that such an act has on both the individuals involved and the community in which the shooting takes place. One moonlit night, Vega is called to the scene of a home invasion in an upscale neighborhood. He chases the suspect into the woods, only to shoot and kill him after a standoff during which he thinks the man is reaching for a weapon. The situation seems ripped straight from the headlines and the fallout is immediate: Vega becomes a target for scorn and protest, and both his career and his relationship with community activist Adele Figueroa are jeopardized. But as new revelations emerge about the man's connection to Vega's past, it seems that there is more to the shooting than meets the eye. VERDICT Chazin's well-plotted mystery features a compelling cast of characters and a timely plot that will please fans of police procedurals and detective fiction by authors such as Michael Connelly and Richard Price.--Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins

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