Buried on Avenue B

March 1, 2012

After an elderly man with encroaching Alzheimer's confesses to his home attendant that as a long-ago junkie and petty thief he killed his partner in crime, police from the NYPD reluctantly dig up the community garden where the body is supposed to be buried. Instead of a dead man, they find the body of a carefully dressed ten-year-old boy. Tough-minded Det. Darlene O'Hara, last seen in the best-selling Shadows Still Remain, is on the case. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2012
Manhattan South's Detective Darlene O'Hara (Shadows Still Remain, 2009) scours the eastern seaboard for the truth about a grisly discovery in a community garden. Home health care aide Paulette Williamson doesn't expect O'Hara to take her seriously when she reports that her client, veteran junkie Gus Henderson, told her that he murdered his off-again partner Charles Faulk 17 years ago and buried him in the garden at 6th Street and Avenue B. The addled old man clearly isn't much of a witness, even to his own felonies. But O'Hara persuades her boss to let her dig up the plot Henderson has indicated. Sure enough, they find a corpse, though it's that of a 9-year-old boy who's been much more recently interred after he bled out from a bullet wound in his shoulder. Stung by having gratuitously opened a cold case with an unidentified victim and no leads, O'Hara posts the technical specs of the bullet on the national law enforcement database. To her amazement, the Sarasota PD reports a match. Longboat Key resident Benjamin Levin, who forsook the boxing ring 60 years ago to manufacture women's gloves, reportedly shot himself six months ago with the same .22 rifle. What possible connection could there be between two shooting deaths of victims two generations removed whose remains were discovered 1,200 miles apart? To answer that question, O'Hara will have to team up with a no-nonsense lesbian detective in Sarasota, track down a suspicious van gone missing in South Carolina, search for a pair of distraction burglars who prey on the recently widowed elderly, and interrogate a clutch of gypsies back home. De Jonge seasons what might have been a routine procedural with a heroine who's sensitive without being tiresome and a half-dozen nifty surprises.

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Starred review from June 15, 2012

Gus, a former junkie and petty criminal, and now an Alzheimer's patient, confesses to have killed and buried his old partner in an East Village community garden off Avenue B 17 years earlier, but instead homicide detective Darlene O'Hara (Shadows Still Remain) uncovers the skeleton of a ten-year-old boy. The body is in an advanced state of decomposition, yet it was carefully buried within the last few weeks with an odd array of mementos. Having access to the fringe community of New York's Lower East Side, O'Hara sets off in search of the street urchin's killer. VERDICT The author's hard-drinking, hard-living protagonist returns in a second edgy investigative thriller, which comes full circle in a stunningly creative manner. His hard-boiled prose and urban slang transports readers of serious crime fiction through gritty, harsh scenes populated with colorful characters Another stellar read from de Jonge--or as O'Hara would say, "Avenue B's friggin' amazing!" [See Prepub Alert, 2/5/12; library marketing]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.