Potter’s Field

Hart’s fifth Ash McKenna novel (after 2017’s The Woman from Prague) brings the series to a satisfying close. After a long period of travel, the screw-up, former drug addict, and tough guy with a white knight complex reluctantly returns to his Staten Island roots. Can he get it together, or is he headed back to old, bad habits and self-destructive ways? Ash struggles to nail down the basics of a more stable life, but he can’t resist Ginny, a drag queen turned heroin kingpin, who hires him to find a missing associate named Spencer Chavez. Through sometimes bumbling but also courageous and resourceful efforts, he wriggles into the seamy side of Staten Island’s ugly heroin scene while tracking the missing Chavez. He gets his bearings enough to realize that he’s over his head; a few gripping action sequences demonstrate the high-stakes violence of a drug dealer’s turf war. Hart has a fine command of wiseguy comments, a modern take on the noir crime idiom, and enough vulnerability in his protagonist to make the reader sorry to see the last of Ash. Agent: Josh Getzler, HSG Agency. (July)