At the start of Kelly's poetic first novel, Phoenix Scribe
reporter Michael Callan stands at the grave of Rhea Montero, a woman he once loved who he suspects ran a crime syndicate he's investigating. A friend from Rhea's childhood, the naïve Daly Marcus, can't believe Rhea could have been a crook. Together Callan and Marcus seek the truth as murder erupts around them and they're drawn into a web of human trafficking and darker crimes. Kelly, a longtime reporter for the Arizona Republic
, excels in capturing the local scene, the high desert and Phoenix itself, with such intriguing neighborhoods as “the gangbanger purlieus of the West Valley, where I once heard a driver chastised because his booming car radio was drowning out a gunfight.” His alter ego Callan, a legalized Irish national with a dicey past, shows potential as a series hero, but the revelations he unearths will be overly familiar to most mystery readers. (Nov.)
