Charlie Newton
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Information about the author.
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Calumet City: A Novel
Charlie Newton
- 2009 Edgar-1st Novel nominee
- 2009 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- 2009 Steel Dagger shortlist
- Score: 18.59
Among the most self-assured and sharply crafted debuts in recent years, Calumet City detonates a Molotov cocktail of character-driven suspense and ghetto-Chicago intrigue.
Meet Patti Black, the most decorated cop in Chicago. On her ghetto beat, Patti Black redefines the word badass. But her steel-plated exterior—solitary, stoic, loveless—belies the wrenching legacy of her orphan childhood. Haunted by the horrifying abuse she suffered at the hands of her foster parents, Patti Black sublimates past torments into a meticulously maintained tough-gal persona.
When a series of unrelated cases—a drug bust gone bad, a mayoral assassination attempt, the murder of a state attorney, the exhumation of a long-concealed body from a tenement basement wall—all point in Patti Black’s direction, she finds herself facing the dark truth: You can’t hide from your history, no matter how far into the fog you run. For Patti Black, that history didn’t die in the tenement wall; it’s alive—and riding her down.
In researching this electrifying thriller, Charlie Newton rode in the squad car…
