Set in Detroit in 1944, Bartoy's gloomy, atmospheric successor to his hard-boiled debut, The Devil's Own Rag Doll
(2005), finds former police detective Pete Caudill unemployed and alone after quitting the force in the wake of the bloody race riots the year before. His hardened talk, however, belies a soft heart, and when an African-American acquaintance named Walker asks Caudill to investigate the murder of his sister, Felicia, whose body was discovered outside a Lloyd Motors Cleveland auto plant (now given over to war production), Caudill steps into the fray again. The ex-cop renews his relationship with the company's founder, Jasper Lloyd, who's besieged by an incompetent son and nosey Feds, and sees a link between Felicia's death and that of another woman found outside Lloyd's Indiana plant. Bartoy provides a moving, frighteningly real view of WWII-era Detroit and its denizens, but some readers may be disappointed by the lack of narrative drive. (Nov.)
