Carney

Carter’s fifth crime novel centered on Baxter Police Department captain Delia Mariola (after Johnny-Boy) is another winner. Baxter, a “crumbling rust belt city,” has been transformed by a new Nissan assembly plant and an accompanying shantytown, known as Boomtown, where the workers live. The sharp population increase has led the police to hire patrol officers at a speed that prevents thorough vetting. As a result, Mariola has a massive police corruption problem to fix. Her initiative gets sidetracked when one of Baxter’s few honest cops, sergeant Rowan Krauss, is found fatally shot in his patrol car while on duty in Boomtown. The evidence suggests that Krauss may have been killed by someone he trusted. Carter alternates Mariola’s search for the murderer with chapters from the perspective of Tom Carney, an undercover cop Mariola has hired to clean up the Baxter PD, despite her private doubts about his loyalties. Evocative prose (“His small features sit like isolated islands on his face”), a well-wrought atmosphere, and three-dimensional characters continue to set this series apart. It’s a hard-boiled tour de force. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (Feb.)