Unpunished

December 12, 2016
In bestseller Black’s solid sequel to 2016’s That Darkness, forensic technician Maggie Gardiner and her associate, homicide detective Jack Renner, investigate the suspicious death of Robert Davis, a copy editor at the Cleveland Herald. Davis’s body was found late one night hanging by the neck above the printing machinery in the Herald’s three-story-high offset room. What first appears to be a suicide turns out to be murder. Talk of the impending death of the daily print newspaper lends color to the case, the details of which police procedural wonks are sure to relish. Black does a good job contrasting the complex characters of her two leads. Given the devil-in-the-details character of her profession, Maggie is naturally drawn to minutiae. Jack’s idea of serving justice leans more toward ignoring the nuance and inconvenience of due process—to say the least—and it’s that divergence that both divides and, ironically, binds the two. Savvy mystery fans should be able to predict whodunit, though the fun lies in the process of getting there. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Agency.

December 15, 2016
A murder at the struggling Cleveland Herald reunites forensic investigator Maggie Gardiner and detective Jack Renner (introduced in That Darkness, 2016), who share each other's dreadful secrets. When the body of copy editor Bob Davis is found hanging above the newspaper assembly line, it seems a suicide until Gardiner recognizes that it's actually murder by strangulation. And Davis is only the first on the newspaper's staff to die, with the next incident so blatant there's no suspicion of suicide. As the investigation continues, Gardiner worries about the off-duty activities of Renner, whom she discovered was a vigilante serial killer, a la Dexter. More than one character bemoans the death of the daily newspaper and the resulting effect on our democracy, as the Herald's future is revealed to be the underlying cause of the mayhem. Solid mystery fare, though the real appeal here is to those who share concern over the fate of newspapers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)