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Buried on Avenue B    by Peter De Jonge Amazon.com order for
Buried on Avenue B
by Peter De Jonge
Order:  USA  Can
Harper, 2012 (2012)
Hardcover, e-Book

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* *   Reviewed by Bob Walch

Gritty homicide detective Darlene O'Hara takes the reader on a tour of New York City's Lower East Side and introduces an eclectic collection of colorful characters with names like Popsicle, Fudgesicle and Freek in this new thriller.

When an Alzheimer's patient tells his caregiver he killed his partner in crime seventeen years ago, the police are skeptical. No matter, though; they decide to search the community garden where the skeletal remains supposedly were buried.

What they find is not the ancient skeleton of a petty crook but the body of a ten year old boy. Obviously this is not what the officers expected to exhume and it sets in motion an investigation that takes O'Hara into the seedy corners of Tompkins Square Park, through the marginal areas of Brooklyn and even south to Florida, where she teams up with Connie Wawrinka, an investigator with the Sarasota Police Department.

The two detectives uncover a tribe of criminals who prey on the weakest members of society. Both the very young and the very old are at risk. O'Hara is determined to end the cycle of violence even if, in the process, she has to get a little heavy-handed herself.

An edgy character who seems quite comfortable when it comes to poking and peering into the darker corners of society, Darlene O'Hara is a throwback to less genteel times when men and women investigators used plenty of slang and drank rot-gut whiskey, not Chardonnay or Merlot.

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