Gone Quiet

Detective Marti MacAlister, the only black woman on the Lincoln Prairie, Ill., police force, and her white male partner Vik Jessenovik have overcome the tensions that troubled them in Dead Time and Slow Burn . The death of an elderly black man raises suspicions of murder when the coroner's report indicates suffocation as well as non-fatal poisoning. At first glance Henry Hamilton seemed to have been an upstanding member of Mount Gethsemane Baptist Church, of which he was treasurer, an exemplary husband and father to his wife, two stepdaughters and daughter. But as Marti probes deeper into her community, she unearths ugly family secrets and discovers that those who worked with the victim at the church didn't like him. One of the stepdaughters, a juvenile probation officer whom both detectives admire, becomes a suspect, prompting Marti and Vik to step up their investigations. Bland breathes life into her thought-provoking story with deft use of detail and keen insight into Marti's close-knit community. (July)