“In the final mystery in his trilogy starring Frank Marr, Swinson continues to situate his drama on the seedy streets of Washington, D.C., with his functioning addict private eye now in recovery. With ripped-from-the-headlines intensity, Swinson has Marr investigating his former partner’s possible involvement in the shooting of an African-American boy, and ratchets up the drama by having Marr enlist the help of a young man he had once victimized. As they travel through the capital city’s drug underworld, Swinson sustains the velocity of the drama and ingeniously gets at the power dynamic of personal relationships with nuance and generosity toward broken people in his messy world of ambiguous boundaries.” — The National Book Review
