I’ll read almost any crime novel featuring a journalist. A journalist turned PI? I’m in. James Queally’s All These Ashes brings back Russell Avery in the sequel to Line of Sight. While I didn’t read the first one, I’d suggest interested readers start at the beginning. Why not?

Avery was a reporter who depended on the Newark, New Jersey police for many of his stories. When he burned them, shining a light on their actions in the shooting of a young man, they turned their backs on him. He couldn’t buy a story, although he still tries. Lieutenant Bill Henniman did suggest he get a P.I. license, but all he has to show for that is a failed business. Then Henniman hires him.

In 1996, four teenagers disappeared. The youngest was thirteen. Shayna Bell, the oldest, was sixteen. After two months, Shayna’s older sister, Cynthia, raised hell until the media became involved. Those four, Shayna, her sister, and two cousins, became known as The Twilight Four, Newark’s most notorious case. Abel Musa, Cynthia’s ex-boyfriend, went to prison after an informer said he confessed to setting a building on fire with the four teens locked inside. Now, Musa is dying of pancreatic cancer, out of prison on compassionate leave. And, Bill Henniman believes he’s innocent. He wants Avery to find the killer.

Henniman could lose his pension if he’s connected too closely to the investigation. Avery could find a story that would bring him back into the newspaper game. Although the two have never been close, Avery agrees. It’s a case that will bring him nothing but grief. He and Henniman are injured when a boobytrapped house explodes around them. One by one, their sources die or refuse to help. Avery finds himself trapped in Newark’s dirty politics, scrambling because one invaluable source works for a candidate. And, he finds out how brutal politics can be when he’s offered the chance for a story with pictures that could compromise one of the candidates.

Why do Avery and Henniman fight for answers in a case that could destroy them? Henniman admits he doesn’t like Avery, but he understands him. “I get up. I try and make this city a little less terrible, protect the people who need it.”

Russell Avery might not be a reporter at the moment. But, reporters, too, get up every day hoping to make their city a little less terrible. In All These Ashes, Avery struggles with his own ethics. It’s those struggles, and that hard work by reporters that continues to appeal to me as a fan of crime fiction.

James Queally’s website is https://jamesqueallywriter.com/

All These Ashes by James Queally. Polis Books, 2021. ISBN 9781951709501 (hardcover), 320p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I read a .PDF for a journal review.