Sweet Thing

Starred review from August 14, 2023
Set in the final days of 1999, this terrific standalone from Swinson (City on the Edge) finds Washington, D.C., homicide detectives Alexander Blum and Kelly Ryan called to investigate the murder of a low-level heroin dealer named Chris Doyle. While searching the crime scene, Blum finds a Polaroid of Doyle with Arthur Holland, a confidential informant from the detective’s previous stint in narcotics. He pockets the photo and, while trying to find Arthur, discovers his old C.I. has been missing for days after a conversation with his fragile, heroin-addicted girlfriend Celeste, of whom Blum feels immediately protective. When Blum and Ryan team up with narcotics detective Frank Marr (from an earlier Swinson series), they turn up evidence that points straight to Celeste, and before long, Blum crosses a line to protect her, spiraling downward until he’s in the middle of a desperate plot involving a drug kingpin, a corrupt cop, and a strip joint. Drawing on his experience as a D.C. cop and writing in clipped, terse prose, Swinson transforms the turn of the millennium into a distant noir-tinged era that feels both tougher and simpler than the present. This is sure to please fans of George Pelecanos and Richard Price. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents.

September 15, 2023
Noir crime in the voice of a deeply flawed cop. First-person narrator Det. Alexander Blum and his partner, Det. Kelly Ryan, investigate homicides in the Washington, D.C., area. Looking into a murder, Blum finds a photo of a victim arm-in-arm with his confidential informant Arthur Holland. Blum goes looking for Arthur and meets his drug-addicted girlfriend, Celeste. Then Arthur dies soon after telling Blum that Celeste had shot the victim, who'd been raping her. Now she wonders who's going to take care of her. An overly sympathetic homicide detective will, as it happens. Blum and Celeste have sex, and he provides her with drugs that he had secretly hidden during a bust. And why not? She's so beautiful, such a sweet thing. "She was like a fucking drug and only after a couple of hits I was addicted." He steals evidence or hides and plants it, out of evident desire to help Celeste. But a reader might legitimately wonder if he would do this type of thing anyway. Blum's lawbreaking on her behalf overcomes her mistrust of him, but he begins to realize "how much I had really fallen." And speaking of f-bombs: if you removed every page that had one, this book would be a thin tome indeed. Anyway, Blum is a weak man who lacks willpower, and he knows it. He's a bad cop, but he tells a good story. How far will he go to please Celeste? "I'd gone too far already," he acknowledges, but "[s]he was worth it. How many times have I said that to myself?" Their lives swirl into a dark abyss that even his partner doesn't know about. Author Swinson is a retired D.C. detective and a talented writer who brings grit and realism to the story. This bleak, gripping novel is not for delicate sensibilities.

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Starred review from September 15, 2023
The action in this bracing procedural begins when Washington, DC, police detective Alex Blum is rummaging around a murdered man's room and comes across a startling photo: the victim buddying up with a man who, years ago, was Alex's major drug-world snitch. Intuiting that this connection may be the key to solving the murder, he gets to work, becoming involved with the snitch's girlfriend along the way. Swinson (City on the Edge, 2021), himself a retired police detective, is known for his dialogue, but here he takes it to the next level with an incredible protracted scene in which a wired-up young female cop goes undercover in a strip joint. Rather than narrating the action from her perspective, it's all told from the viewpoint of the sweaty and anxious cops sitting in a squad car parked outside, listening to the audio as tensions mount. Readers won't be able to get enough of this.

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