Witnesses for the Dead: Stories

The 14 stories in this strong all-original anthology from Phillips (The Obama Inheritance) and Haywood (the Aaron Gunner series) focus on witnesses to crimes who, as the editors point out in their introduction, “take the initiative to see that the guilty are punished and the victims receive justice.” Standouts include Aaron Philip Clark’s stunning “Death at the Sundial Motel,” in which an undocumented woman from Haiti seeks to do right by her 20-year-old son after he’s killed in a hit-and-run in San Diego County; Richie Narvaez’s riveting “The Gardener of Roses,” in which a budding journalist gets caught up in “fake news,” a terrorist plot, and an FBI search in Puerto Rico; and Darrell Jones’s “Star Witness,” which exposes the abuses of Arizona guards in a migrant border detention center. Also notable are Cara Black’s tense spy tale set in German-occupied Paris, “Code Name Pénélope,” and S.J. Rozan’s “Pearl Joy,” which makes clever use of Chinese superstitions such as vertical chopsticks in a rice bowl, “an offering from the living to the deceased.” These tales put a gimlet eye on the satisfying rewards of retribution. Agents: (for Phillips) David Hale Smith, InkWell Management; (for Haywood) Lukas Ortiz, Philip Spitzer. (Nov.)