Second Girl by David
Swinson (Mulholland Books, 2016) is the first book about retired Washington,
DC, cop Frank Marr and the gritty underworld of DC. Ostensibly Marr retired
before he had his 20 years in because of burn-out, but in reality he is a drug
addict and his supervisors eased him quietly out so as not to jeopardize the
dozens of high-profile convictions Marr had obtained. Now Marr does investigative
work for a few lawyers and whoever can pay him while he searches for his next
fix. As the book opens, he’s panicking about his diminishing supply of cocaine.
He has
identified a small-time group of drug dealers on the east side of DC. He
watches the crew for a few days to learn their schedule. He waits until they
leave with their first haul of product to sell at the nearby park, then breaks
into their apartment and is searching methodically for their stockpile when he
hears a noise from the closed bathroom. He opens the door to find a nude
teenaged girl, handcuffed to the pipes under the sink. She is bruised and
battered and terrified. While Frank generally has the tenderness of a Mafia hit
man, he can’t bring himself to leave her there. He scoops her up and takes her
to the office of a lawyer he works for, buying himself some time to manufacture
an explanation for how he happened to be in the apartment where she was locked
up.
The teenager
is one of several missing girls from the Virginia suburbs. Her parents are so
grateful to Frank that they tell another set of parents whose daughter has been
gone for months. These people are desperate and beg Frank to search for their
daughter. Frank does not want to take the case, believing the girl to be out of
the area by now, but he agrees to work a week and begins to annoy the police on
the case as well as the drug dealers who had been trafficking girls.
David Swinson is a retired police
detective from the DC Metropolitan Police Department himself and his writing
bristles with knowledge of local police operations and the neighborhoods of DC.
Frank Marr is an inspired creation, casually cruel and unscrupulous while
fundamentally kind. He spins one whopper after another to cover up his addiction.
He tap dances around the DC and Virginia police and the drug dealers, all of
them suspecting he’s pulling a fast one but none of them able to figure it out.
Breakneck pace, good writing, authentic setting, and a brilliant antihero.
Starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. Recommended!
·
Publisher: Mulholland Books (June
7, 2016)
·
Language: English
·
Hardcover: 368 pages
·
ISBN-10: 9780316264174
·
ISBN-13: 978-0316264174
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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