Shot in Detroit

At 40, Violet Hart is a down-on-her-luck photographer still waiting for her big break. Living in Detroit, with its plethora of crumbling and abandoned buildings, she is drawn to "ruin porn," but her focus changes when her lover Ben, a mortician catering to the black community, asks her to take a final photo of a family's loved one. In this moment she finds inspiration to capture the images of at least a dozen young black men in their final state of repose and to exhibit these pictures in her own one-woman show. By immersing herself in the world of the dead and constantly searching for "unusual" scenes to shoot, Violet inadvertently places herself, and those around her, in harm's way. Derringer Award-winning author Abbott (Concrete Angel) has delivered a fresh look at the disintegration of Detroit as seen through the lens of a camera. Less a suspense novel than the plot summary may imply, it is instead a detailed account of one woman battling her inner demons against the backdrop of a city that is doing the same.