Almost Night

The protagonist of Almost Night, Susannah Cannon, is a homicide detective for the Miami Police Department who is assigned to hunt down a cunning serial killer preying on lonely professional women. The case has special resonance for Cannon because of her own troubled past: tough as she is on the job, she is vulnerable to cold-or worse-emotionally destructive men. The team that works with her to track the killer reflects the cultural melange of the city: Bea, her formidable African-American female commander; Rafael, her Cuban emigre partner; Anglo colleagues Elton, a former motorcycle cop, and Craig, a wrestler and family man; and Raja, the fully Americanized Indian and self-possessed forensic pathologist. Almost Night offers compelling reading, and promises a bright future for this accomplished first-time novelist. 273 pages.