Leonard Mitchell is the press secretary at the Parks Department, following an interesting and controversial career. He now handles stories which include occasional crime, and he's summoned to attend the scene of a construction death. Leonard suspects that the safety inspections had been marked up but not carried out; seems the police think the same way. Detective Sergeant Ralph Mulino is on the job, leading a special unit to root out corruption.

I like that one of the team is new graduate cop Aurelia Peralta, and the building developer is also female, Eleanor Hill. She sees herself as providing a thousand apartments in a district desperate for professional housing, with affordable social housing as well. Eleanor is a lady of colour and she's prepared to help rehouse less well off locals and still turn a profit. Some protesters are refusing to allow more building, and she believes they just don't want their houses overlooked. Most of those involved at the construction site are men however, and one of them must know something. Mulino decides to let Mitchell help investigate, because he wisely doesn't want to tread on the wrong toes.

I was fascinated by how swiftly the scene was built for us; the cast, motives, influences and locations. To flesh it out, we get the intricacies of supervising a cop's personal use of cellphone and computer issued by his department, and issues surrounding the gentrification of old neighbourhoods. Some of the characters are better than others at doing their jobs, just like in life. And a seven year old boy vanishes from his school yard, introducing fresh suspense. I will definitely have to read the previous book.

By sending his established, cynical sleuth Mitchell undercover in the real estate industry, author Andrew Case gives us a good look behind the scenes and demonstrates how dangerous it would be to catch A FALLING KNIFE. Full marks from me.

Book Summary