Starred review from July 26, 2021
In Queally’s outstanding sequel to 2020’s Line of Sight, PI Russell Avery, a former reporter who once covered the police beat for a Newark, N.J., newspaper, agrees to look into a cold case for police lieutenant Bill Henniman. In 1996, four teens—sisters Shayna and Adriana Bell, and two male cousins of theirs—vanished on the same night in Newark. In the weeks and months that followed, Shayna and Adriana’s older sister, Cynthia, was able to stir up some press attention, but the case went nowhere. Not until 2012 did a snitch tell Henniman that Cynthia’s ex-boyfriend, Abel Musa, admitted to trapping the teenagers in a building that he then torched. Shayna was threatening to tell her parents Musa was sleeping with her, and the other three were collateral damage in Musa’s effort to silence Shayna. Musa was convicted of murder, but now, with Musa dying of cancer, Henniman suspects he’s innocent and wants Avery to investigate. Queally gets all the details right while populating the plot with believable characters. Fans of Bruce DeSilva’s Liam Mulligan will clamor for more. Agent: James McGowan, BookEnds Literary.
August 27, 2021
This intricately plotted sequel to Line of Sight (which was the debut novel by Los Angeles Times crime reporter Queally) combines a gruesome cold case with Newark's dirty politics. Like its predecessor, it features reporter Russell Avery, who became a private investigator when his police sources in Newark, NJ, dried up. Avery is still dreaming of landing a big story, but now he's been hired by police lieutenant Bill Henniman to investigate "the Twilight Four," Newark's most notorious case. It began in 1996, when four teenagers disappeared. Back then, a confidential informant told police that Abel Musa was claiming to have killed the four teens by locking them in a building and setting fire to it; on that basis, Musa was eventually convicted of the crime. Now, 24 years later, Musa is dying and has been released for prison on compassionate leave. Henniman doesn't believe that Musa was the killer and wants Avery to find out who did kill the four teens. In the course of his investigation, Avery is set on fire in a booby-trapped house, watches his sources die or disappear, and gets mired in Newark politics. It's a violent, difficult case that forces Avery to struggle with his own ethics. Does he want to find the killer because he hopes to provide answers for Henniman, Musa, and the families of the Twilight Four? Or is he just looking for his big story? VERDICT Fans of Brad Parks's "Carter Ross" crime series, also set in Newark, will appreciate Queally's latest story featuring reporter-turned-investigator Avery. --Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
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Starred review from September 1, 2021
Once-thriving journalist/private-eye Russell Avery (who appeared in the series debut, Line of Sight, 2020) has hit the skids. After being laid off from his reporting job and losing his cop contacts, Avery now depends on freelance gigs for the New York City tabloids. The first part of this mystery is superb in showing the kind of sleazily brilliant tactics Avery uses to get the quote/photo from fresh victims of tragedy, what he calls "stenography with a splash of breaking and entering." Russell is a wry commentator on how his near-poverty leads him to tricking victims and hating himself. What seems like salvation comes in the form of an about-to-retire police lieutenant (every other cop has shunned him after Russell exposed a police scandal). The lieutenant wants Russell to investigate a decades-old cold case, in which four Black teens were savagely murdered. Avery's efforts to exonerate the man Avery believes was wrongly convicted and imprisoned, and to find the true murderer(s), leads him afoul of Newark City Hall, a mayoral race, and the police. This is a story as much about Avery's ethics as it is about his investigation. Queally, himself a former crime reporter for the Star-Ledger in New Jersey, brings both reporting expertise and novelistic flair to this second Avery mystery. Absorbing throughout.
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