Boyce's second series installment (after Out of the Blues) begins with a shooting of Spelman College students during a vigil and spins into multilayered investigations tied to the Homes Project. Boyce draws on her 30-year career in Atlanta's police department to mine the city's difficult history of race relations, drugs, prostitution, and poverty. Sarah "Salt" Alt, Boyce's empathetic lead character, truly cares about the citizens on her old beat. Salt tries to juggle the new tensions of the backlash to the murders with the discovery of a decomposed body of a young girl she previously tried to help. The novel successfully captures the conflicting emotions and priorities of an overburdened police force. Rebecca Lowman's reading balances the wide variety and backgrounds of Boyce's characters.
VERDICT A successful sophomore mystery, recommended for large fiction collections. ["In addition to being a fast-paced crime story with an empathetic, feisty lead, Boyce's latest also offers a meditation on violence and institutional racism": LJ 1/17 review of the Putnam hc.]
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