Windy City Dying: 10 (Marti MacAlister Mysteries 10)

Marti MacAlister Eleanor Taylor Blands popular African-American heroine is forced to confront some extremely personal demons from long ago-her husband Johnny MacAlister is long-buried but now someone from Johnnys past is back looking for him and Marti fears she knows who it might be.. In the meantime her work as a suburban Chicago homicide detective has taken her back in time in another way to a group of children she once counseled each now four years older and with four more years worth of problems. Theres LaShawna now seventeen and with her own four-year-old daughter; Padgett all grown up at twelve but still living with his alcoholic mother; and then Jose fifteen whos in the most trouble of them all. Hes been accused of murder but the Jose that Marti remembers could not have committed such a terrible crime. Her first step is to find out what could have happened in the past four years to lead Jose to such a desperate act and she hopes her second step will be to prove his innocence.. It wont be easy though; just whats going on with this tight group of kids and how does it relate to the increasingly foreboding sense of doom Marti gets about the mystery man whos nosing around the remnants of her distant past? Shes not sure but she knows she must figure it all out and soon before another of the children or even Marti herself falls into grave danger. Windy City Dying is another taut absorbing read from one of the masters of mystery fiction.