Winter And Night (A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Novel) by S J Rozan

Backcover blurb:  Private detective Bill Smith is hurtled headlong into the most provocative - and personal - case of his career when he receives a chilling late night telephone call from the NYPD, who is holding his fifteen-year-old nephew Gary.  But before he can find out what's going on, Gary escapes Bill's custody and disappears into the dark and unfamiliar streets...

Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, try to find the missing teen and uncover what has led him so far from home.  Their search takes them to Gary's family in a small town in New Jersey, where they discover that one of Gary's classmates was murdered.  Bill and Lydia delve into the crime - only to find it eerily similar to a decades-old murder-suicide...

Now, with his nephew's future - and perhaps his very life - at stake, Bill must unravel a long-buried crime and confront the darkness of his own past...

My favourite passage from the book displaying Rozan's talent in describing a situation.  Simple yet powerful.  I love it to bits:

In a front yard, a guy was raking leaves.  A gust of wind charged into his leaf pile, tossed the leaves around his lawn.  It shook the branches of the oak tree above him, raining down more leaves, and blew the maple leaves from his neighbour's yard over to him.  The man straightened up, stood holding his rake, staring around him, as the leaves swirled.

My brief thoughts:  Robert Crais wrote that "...Winter and Night...is also a full-bodied novel about the pressures we place on ourselves and our loved ones, and how these pressures can crush us."  Most often and unfairly, bad people get away with what they did and it is only too true that the problem with justice is that there is no such thing.

An excerpt from Chapter One is taken from the author's website and can be read here.

This is another top recommendation by me in as much as it is a rewarding read by one of the finest crime writers of today.  She never disappoints.  That is all I want to say.

In 2003, Winter and Night (published in 2002 and eighth in the series), won the Shamus Award (Best P I Novel), the Barry Award (Best Novel), the Edgar Award (Best Novel), the Nero Award (Excellence in Mystery Genre), the Macavity Award (Best Mystery Novel), and was nominated for the Anthony Award (Best Novel).  In 2009, it picked up the Maltese Falcon Award for "Best Hardboiled Novel" in Japan.

Rating:  5/5