From Publishers Weekly
An auspicious debut, this gritty procedural introduces Marti MacAlister, a black woman detective in Lincoln Prairie, Ill., near Chicago. The Cramer Hotel, a local flophouse, becomes the scene of a crime when Lauretta Dorsey, a schizophrenic who had fled her wealthy family years before, is found murdered in her room. Marti, who has moved from Chicago after her husband's recent death, investigates the victim's background and discovers several secrets in her past. Lauretta had received a psychiatric discharge from the Navy during the Vietnam war; her fiance had mysteriously died. Evidence that some abandoned children who witnessed the crime are being stalked by the killer plus two more deaths in the hotel prod Marti to step up the search for the children. Bland handles the evolving relationship between Marti and a white male partner unsure of women's place in the police world with sensitivity and humor, while evoking with chilling reality the plight of the endangered children and the mentally ill.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Detective Marti McAlister, female, black, and formerly with the Chicago police, now works in much smaller Lincoln Prairie, which has similar crime problems. Marti and cohorts investigate the murder of an inoffensive but neurotic woman in a seedy residential hotel. When the killer begins eliminating possible witnesses, Marti desperately tries to locate several scavenging children before the murderer does. First novelist Bland competently incorporates the minutiae of police procedure with Marti's additional burdens of widowed parenthood, but in a detached and often flat manner that will leave most readers untouched.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
