The Player

Carter Ross looks into the outbreak of a debilitating and sometimes fatal illness within a poor neighborhood of Newark, N.J., in Shamus Award–winner Parks’s engaging fifth mystery featuring the investigative newspaper journalist (after 2013’s The Good Cop). Soon Ross comes down with the same illness and suspects an environmental cause. He discovers that a majority of the workers at a shopping center complex breaking ground nearby have exhibited the same brittle bones and flu-like symptoms as local residents. Then the chief developer of the shopping center, Vaughn McAlister, turns up dead—the victim of a baseball bat to the skull. Ross digs into McAlister’s background and churns up a noxious slurry of underhanded political and business collusion, mob links, and personal drama. Meanwhile, Ross juggles stunning news from an old lover and his mother’s well-meaning meddling in his romantic life. Parks smoothly blends grit and wit, though a muddled climax dulls the final punch. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House. (Mar.)