Line of Sight

Crime reporter Queally makes his impressive fiction debut with a hard-hitting crime novel set in Newark, N.J. PI Russell Avery, a once idealistic white journalist bounced from his newspaper job, now fixes things for screwed-up cops. When Keyonna Jackson, a black social justice activist who serves as Avery’s conscience, spurs him into probing the shooting death of black teenager Kevin Mathis, a suspected drug dealer, Avery plunges into a miasma of police corruption and reconnects with former girlfriend Dina , a reporter bent on unmasking crooked cops. The deeper he investigates, the more Avery becomes convinced that he’s been looking for heroes and villains in a city that breeds only survivors—and where protecting and serving are too often reduced to doing evil so that good may result. This scalding exposé of human failures, in which friendships go tragically sour, powerfully updates Raymond Chandler’s mean streets. Queally is definitely a writer to watch. Agent: James McGowan, BookEnds Literary. (Mar.)