Night Songs

The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries, #2

Washingto, DC, the nation's capital, is a magnificently beautiful city--a city divided by race and by class--and no one knows this truth better than Police Lieutenant Gianna Maglione, head of the Hate Crimes Unit, and investigative newspaper reporter Mimi Patterson. Beyond the marble facades of the monuments, on the side streets off the wide, tree-lined avenues, there lurks an ugliness that Mimi and Gianna get paid to scrutinize. Bits and pieces of stories about rich boys who like to hurt women, prostitutes, vulnerable women on the streets alone, at night, making them perfect targets--Gianna has heard the stories, Mimi has heard the stories, and once again the cop and the reporter are on the trail of the same killer. It will be a difficult hunt because rich boys have rich parents who protect them. But who protects an 80-year old concentration camp survivor when Skinhead neo-Nazis camp outside her house in the middle of the night yelling threats? The cops, right? Wrong--when no laws have been broken. One of Gianna's young cops in the HCU who thinks the law is wrong sets out on her own to protect a frightened old woman  and and pays the price. Newspaper stories that show the Skinheads as cowardly bullies make reporters targets along with the cops. And Mimi still will go out in the middle of the night when a young prostitute calls her for help because she saw the killer--and the killer saw her. The songs of the night.