Revolver

May 16, 2016
Edgar-finalist Swierczynski (Canary) skillfully juggles three interrelated plot lines set decades apart in this complex whodunit. In 1965, Philadelphia police officer Stan Walczak and his partner are in a bar, taking a break from their duties managing street protests in a poor neighborhood. Then someone enters with a gun, and both men are shot dead. In 1995, Stan’s son, Jim, a Philadelphia PD homicide detective, looks into the rape-murder of magazine fact checker Kelly Farrace, a case that attracts the interest of a City Hall eager for a quick resolution. In 2015, Jim’s daughter, Audrey Kornbluth, returns home from Houston to attend the unveiling of a plaque memorializing the 1965 slayings. Audrey’s on the verge of flunking out of Criminal Scene Investigator school, but she hits on the idea of reinvestigating the 50-year-old murders, a choice that not everyone in her family supports. Well-defined characters and a clever mystery more than compensate for an ending that ties up the loose ends a bit too neatly. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management.

June 1, 2016
The murder of two policeman in mid-1960s Philadelphia has reverberations for successive generations of cops in Swierczynski's latest thriller (Canary, 2015, etc.).When two partners, one black and one white, are gunned down in a working-class Philly bar, a low-level holdup man is presumed to be the killer, though there's never enough evidence to convict him. Paroled 30 years later for another crime, the man comes under the scrutiny of Jim Walczak, the dead white cop's son, now a cop himself. Twenty years after that, Jim's estranged daughter, Audrey, an aspiring crime-scene investigator, reopens her grandfather's murder, and her findings upset everyone's assumptions. The novel follows a pattern of setting successive chapters in 1965, 1995, and 2015, the protagonist changing in each. For this to really work, each chapter would have to feed effortlessly into the next instead of feeling like an interruption, which they too often do here. By far the liveliest are the chapters involving Audrey, who's tattooed, as enamored of booze as the other cops in her family, and bored to death with their pieties about duty and loyalty. If anything, the story could use more of her attitude, the way those endless Sunday dinner scenes in every episode of Blue Bloods make you long for someone to plunk their boots on the table. And though the book is about a city riven by racial conflict, there's not nearly enough about the dead black cop and his family. Though this novel is dotted with fine details, its ambitious structure gets in the way of narrative momentum.

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Starred review from June 1, 2016
In 1965, two policemenone white, one blackare shot and killed in a Philadelphia bar. In 1995, a homicide detective surveys a crime scene where a white female jogger lies dead on one of the city's nicest blocks. In 2015, a Bloody Maryswilling hot mess travels home from forensics school to attend the dedication of a plaque honoring her grandfather, shot in the line of duty; in a desperate attempt to save her academic career, she decides to solve his murder. Swierczynski (Canary, 2015), who enjoys high-concept high-wire acts, attempts what might be his riskiest move yet: a three-generation crime saga told in chapters that alternate 1965, 1995, and 2015. As we learn what got Stan Walczak and partner George Wildey killed, Stan's son, Jim, confronts a career-defining case, and both those stories only come to fruition with black-sheep Audrey Kornbluth's present-time trip home. This could have been a gimmick, but instead it's a resounding success, with each story line featuring full-blooded characters and intrigue that works both in its own right and in the larger context. Race plays a large role and is thoughtfully handled in this bleak, powerful tale of corruption and the lasting effects of crime in the City of Brotherly Love. Swierczynski just gets better and better.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016

In 1995, Philadelphia homicide detective Jim Walczak stalks Terrill Lee Stanton when he is released from prison 30 years after his conviction for killing two street cops (one black and one white); one was Walczak's father. Fast-forward to 2015, and Walczak's daughter, a forensic science student, reopens her grandfather's case. From the Edgar-nominated author (e.g., 2015's Canary) who's written multitudinous comics.

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