Providence Rag

Starred review from January 6, 2014
Edgar-winner DeSilva melds moral dilemmas with a suspenseful plot in his third novel featuring Providence, R.I.–based reporter Liam Mulligan (after 2012’s Cliff Walk), his best yet. In 1992, when Mulligan is still handling the sports beat for the Providence Dispatch, an editor assigns him to help cover a gory double murder. Mulligan succeeds in getting more information from the police about the slaughter of Becky Medeiros and her four-year-old daughter, after the paper’s lead crime reporter fails. Two years later, a similar crime claims three more lives—a mother and her two daughters, ages 8 and 12. Mulligan ends up cracking the case, but the main action concerns the fate of the convicted killer, who is due to be released after six years thanks to a legal fluke. When a colleague discovers that efforts to lengthen the incarceration may have been unethical, Mulligan must find a way to balance his passion for the truth with his desire to protect the public. Agent: Susanna Einstein, Einstein Thompson Agency.

March 15, 2014
DeSilva's third visit to Rhode Island tracks the potentially dire consequences of trying a 15-year-old killer as a juvenile instead of locking him up and throwing away the key. The first time Liam Mulligan (Cliff Walk, 2012, etc.) gets pulled off the sports desk at the Providence Dispatch, he's sent out to cover the brutal murder of Becky Medeiros and her daughter Jessica, 4, in suburban Warwick. Their killer, not exactly a criminal mastermind, left so much trace evidence at the scene that it's a simple matter to confirm that he's the perp when Connie Stuart and her two daughters are slaughtered two years later. Mulligan, who's made a friend and confidant of Andy Jennings, the cop in charge of the case, provides some sharp observations and asks a few good questions of his own. The result is the arrest and conviction of neighborhood teen Kwame Diggs. Tried as a juvenile, Diggs is supposed to be released when he's 21. But he's still in a maximum security cell 18 years later because the prison authorities have found one infraction after another to charge him with. When Edward Anthony Mason III, son of the Dispatch's publisher, gets it into his crusading head to investigate whether the charges that have extended Diggs' prison term are on the level, he unleashes a firestorm of protest from right-wing radio firebrand Iggy Rock, thousands of subscribers the struggling Dispatch can ill afford to lose, and of course Mulligan himself, who sees no reason that a sociopath like Diggs should ever be freed, especially now that he's had nearly two decades to choose his next targets and reflect on the mistakes that got him caught. DeSilva, drawing on a real-life case, pours on the ethical complications with such unrelenting suspense that you'll be glad you don't live in Rhode Island. Only the last few chapters are a letdown from the general excellence.

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Starred review from February 15, 2014
The third entry in this gritty newspaper series spans 20 years, from 1992 to 2012, at the start of which a teenage male commits five gruesome murders, is imprisoned for them, and, years later, becomes the center of a campaign to free prisoners convicted as juveniles. Liam Mulligan, the series hero, is a longtime newspaperman for a Providence, Rhode Island, paper who has witnessed the reduction of resources and the firings of friends, all the while still loving the imperiled business. Mulligan's coverage of the murders in 1992 was partially responsible for finding the killer. Under the state's criminal code, the killer should have been released at age 21, but creative fiddling has kept this killer safely behind bars. The son of the paper's publisher wants to launch an investigation into what he sees as corruption, making the killer's freedom a looming possibility. The ethical dilemma seems a bit forced, but it does raise the possibility of more mayhem to come. But there is real suspense here. And Mulligan's character, played off the vicissitudes of his job, is skillfully layered and engaging. DeSilva, who worked for decades at the AP, won an Edgar for Best First Novel for Rogue Island (2010). He knows of what he writes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)