You Can Die Trying
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Gunner attempts to set the record straight for a dead police officer with a racist past
No one in South Central is surprised when Jack McGovern, a brutally racist cop, is accused of gunning down a black teenager in cold blood. But they are shocked when the LAPD actually responds to the charges, firing McGovern and leaving him without badge, pension, or pride. Eight months later, a thief breaks into a stereo store and encounters the disgraced cop, now a night security guard. McGovern draws his gun and, to the thief's surprise, shoots himself in the head.
Few mourn the suicide, but one citizen is unsettled. A witness to the shooting that ended McGovern's career, Mitchell Flowers knows the cop wasn't lying when he said the teenager had fired first. Flowers hires private detective Aaron Gunner to clear the dead cop's name—pitting Gunner against every civilian in South Central. Soon Gunner tugs on a chain of police corruption that stretches all the way to the top of the LAPD.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the third novel to feature African American L.A. private investigator Aaron Gunner (after Not Long for This World ), a white cop much loathed in the black community apparently guns down an unarmed black kid in a dark alley following a robbery. After being publicly crucified, the policeman puts a bullet through his head and dies unmourned. But then an eyewitness confides in Gunner that he saw the kid shoot twice before the cop fired and asks the PI to investigate. In need of a client, Gunner reluctantly takes the volatile case. He finds the gun (a dummy that shoots blanks) and a Latina policewoman willing to listen to this discomfiting new evidence. Barely pausing for narrative breath, the author adds intriguing elements to his plot: the eyewitness isn't a thoroughly convincing player; his brother is beaten up; another kid involved in the robbery is tight-lipped; the dead boy's uncle is a gambler with big debts; and most people in the black community are ready to let this possible injustice pass, believing a larger justice has been served by the cop's death. Gunner is a rarity in recent detective fiction: soured, yet utterly believable, tough and resourceful without being cartoonishly overblown. This pulsating mystery strengthens an already forceful series. ( July )
