Providence Rag

Edgar-winner DeSilva melds moral dilemmas with a suspenseful plot in his third novel featuring Providence, R.I.–based reporter Liam Mulligan (after 2012’s Cliff Walk), his best yet. In 1992, when Mulligan is still handling the sports beat for the Providence Dispatch, an editor assigns him to help cover a gory double murder. Mulligan succeeds in getting more information from the police about the slaughter of Becky Medeiros and her four-year-old daughter, after the paper’s lead crime reporter fails. Two years later, a similar crime claims three more lives—a mother and her two daughters, ages 8 and 12. Mulligan ends up cracking the case, but the main action concerns the fate of the convicted killer, who is due to be released after six years thanks to a legal fluke. When a colleague discovers that efforts to lengthen the incarceration may have been unethical, Mulligan must find a way to balance his passion for the truth with his desire to protect the public. Agent: Susanna Einstein, Einstein Thompson Agency. (Mar.)