Proving Ground

Although it has been 11 years since Slipping into Darkness, Edgar-winner Blauner hasn’t lost his touch, as this page-turner demonstrates. Iraq war veteran Nathaniel Dresden (aka Natty Dread) has returned to New York City for the funeral of his murdered father, lawyer David Dresden. The senior Dresden was suing the FBI on behalf of a Muslim mail carrier, whom they seized and turned over to the Macedonians for “enhanced interrogation.” When detectives Lourdes Robles and Kevin Sullivan catch the case, they find a suspicious pattern of calls from the senior Dresden to the New York FBI office. Natty begins to help his father’s partner, Benjamin Grimaldi, continue the suit, hoping to discover more about his father’s murder. They don’t have an easy time piecing together the murder case or the case against the FBI, but the connections between the two eventually become too great to ignore. Blauner has crafted two strong and complex leads in Natty and Lourdes and given readers an intricate plot that never feels forced. [em]100,000 announced first printing. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management Literary Agency. (May) [/em]