For Willie Black, the new year starts off with a bang, literally. A party two floors up from Willie’s condo unit comes to a tragic end when a local lawyer is shot and killed standing next to a window overlooking the city eight floors below. 

Soon enough, it becomes clear that the perp is not some random knucklehead firing indiscriminately into the air. In the search for the killer, even Willie’s favorite ambulance-chaser, Marcus Green, is a suspect. 

Before long, it is obvious that the shooter didn’t even hit the right target. Carlton DeWitt was the wrong guy at the wrong place, wearing the wrong jacket. 

Eventually, Richmond’s premier nosy-ass reporter will be sucked into a world where academic theft leads to madness and murder. He’ll also walk a fine line between manning the police beat and filing for unemployment when what he sees as an unreasonable demand from his corporate masters drives him to commit fiction under the guise of journalism.

As usual, he’ll find himself a cross purposes with Larry Doby Jones, his frenemy and Richmond’s chief of police. As is often the case, he will benefit from the unique perspective of Awesome Dude, the addled permanent guest of Peggy, Willie’s dope-smoking mom. And he’ll cross swords with the suits and byline stealers who make life at a 21st century newspaper so interesting.

Along the Pipeline Trail, a piece of Richmond hidden away along the banks of the James River, Willie Black will try to unravel this new year’s unhappy beginning.

This is Howard Owen’s 25th novel and the 15th in the Willie Black mystery series. Owen, a longtime newspaperman, has worked at everything from reporter to sports editor to editorial pages editor. He has been writing fiction since 1989. He and his wife, Karen, live in Richmond. Among his earlier novels are the best-selling Littlejohn and the Willie Black mystery, Oregon Hill, which won the Dashiell Hammett prize for best crime literature in the United States and Canada.