The Philadelphia Quarry

Blackis back. Willie Black was last seen, in Oregon Hill, risking the final tatteredremnants of his checkered career—and his life—to free a man almost everyoneelse believed guilty. Willie’s still covering the night police beat withits violent drug deals and dirt naps, still avoiding the hawk that periodicallyswoops down to pluck away a few more of his colleagues in a flounderingbusiness. He still drinks too much, smokes too much, and disobeys too much. Theonly thing that keeps him employed is that he’s a damn fine reporter. Even hisbeleaguered bosses would concede that. Williefinds himself neck-deep in a part of Richmond that a boy growing up in OregonHill could only experience through illicit midnight sorties to the city’s mostexclusive swimming hole. The Quarry was where Alicia Parker Simpson identifiedRichard Slade as her rapist twenty-eight years ago. Five days after DNAevidence recently freed Slade from the prison system in which he had spent his adultlife, Alicia Simpson was found shot to death. Almost everyone thinks Slade did it—who can blame them?—but Willie hashis doubts. And when the full weight of the city’s old money falls on him, tryingto crush the story, he becomes even more determined to chase the thing thatalways seems to get him into trouble: the truth. That Richard Slade ishis cousin and a link to his long-dead African American father only makesWillie that much more tenacious. In the end Williewill be drawn back to the Philadelphia Quarry, where it all started so long agoand in whose murky waters the truth lies.