Officer Down

July 18, 2005
Schwegel's instantly engrossing debut crime novel begins with the bungled bust of child molester Marko Trovic: after Samantha "Smack" Mack, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking Chicago police officer, and her partner and ex-lover, Fred, storm a pitch-dark tenement house, Smack wakes later with a nasty concussion, but Fred, shot during the attempted arrest, never does. Police officials decree that Smack's "friendly fire" killed Fred, but she's sure there were others in the room with them that night. Reeling from her concussion, Smack is given administrative leave, but offered little support (or hope of commitment) from her married lover, detective Mason Imes. A determined Smack realizes busting Trovic will be her problem alone: a meddling Internal Affairs operative harasses her, the Sarge threatens to confiscate her badge and Mason says they're going to close the case. Persistence and detective work fueled by righteous rage lead Smack to a guilty informant and an elaborate drug ring supervised by an ever expanding cast of suspects, some much closer to her than she ever imagined. Smack's voice is rough and real, conveying both her tough cookie persona and the authentic emotions behind her street face. Schwegel's sympathetic protagonist and fast-paced action turns out an impressive, gripping first novel.

August 1, 2005
This debut mystery has a first-person female cop narrator who is neither an armored truck of toughness nor a paper-thin facade shielding a dump truck of vulnerability--too often the either-or into which so many fictional women cops fall. The narrator, a North Side Chicago cop named Samantha Mack, comes across like a real, nonwhiny, funny person. It's not that Mack doesn't have baggage--she must go on patrol with her ex-partner, who deserted her to get married, for one thing--but the backstory never overwhelms the character. After Mack and her estranged partner get shot at in an apartment sting, Mack wakes up in the hospital to learn that the old partner is dead from gunshot wounds and that the cartridges came from her own gun. The rest of this absorbing quest novel comprises Mack's attempts to buck the police bureaucracy and get to the bottom of the murder. Credible cop background and evocative Chicago scenes add to the pleasures of this memorable first novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)