Just before Christmas, police answer a murder call from the Connolly Village projects, a.k.a. "Conville." The victim is unidentifiable, naked, bound, and set afire. Working in his breakneck style, Detective Tom Rinne has a witness and suspect before anyone expects. When he identifies the victim, however, he reopens the case of a beautiful girl who vanished last summer - a girl with connections to the most powerful men in the city. As Rinne dives back into the case, it's only a minor political firestorm. When a young black suspect is shot, however, it spirals into a race war. Rinne finds himself first a scapegoat, then a suspect, then a fugitive. One woman can save him or sell him down the river - the only woman he ever loved. One simple device - the girl's phone - can unravel the truth and expose secrets Rinne himself might prefer to keep hidden. "The Police Procedural has three supremos: Ed McBain, Joseph Wambaugh, and David Simon with Homicide. Clear a space on the shelf beside these masters. Jack Howland has written a superb novel that sits right alongside those maestros." Ken Bruen, Shamus-Award-winning author of The Guards and Killing the Tinkers.