The Odds

Chief Richard Christie is in the hospital with leukemia. He is due to begin chemo and his department is worried about him. Four young children of the Phillips family are abandoned by their step-mother. Since their father had died a few years ago, the children are on their own. The eldest child is Meg, age fourteen. She and her brother and sisters are very industrious and don't want to ask for help because they fear they will be placed in forster homes. They do well in school and do what they can to provide food and enough money for the very basics. Nick Banks is a new employee in the neighborhood pizza parlor. When Meg doesn't have enough to pay for her food, he gives them food at lower cost. He even gives some food for free telling Meg that it was a day old and he couldn't sell it. A young boy is found dead from drugs and homicide detectives John Potocki and Colleen Greer are assigned to the case. Since the case involves drugs, they are placed under the Narcots department on a temporary basis. The police think that the pizza parlor might be a place where drug activity takes place, they want Colleen to go undercover, become friendly with Nick and see what she can uncover. Nick is a former con and is obliged to help one of the drug enforcers. However, when that person wants to harm someone, Nick won't go along with it and as a result, he is badly injured. What couldn't be forseen is the connection of Nick and the Phillips children. There is a beautiful relationship that shows how good people can be in a world surrounded by crime and greed. The story is well told and the characters have such depth and charitable traits that they will be remembered long into the future. The author has given the reader a lesson of urban drugs and how that can take over a neighborhood. It depicts how easily it is for children to become involved in drugs and how difficult to maintain a drug free lifestyle.

The prose of George's new novel is spare, the images sharp, the characters sympathetic and completely believable. Her Pittsburgh is both beautiful and dangerous, and full of people that are unseen by the middle and upper classes, but who know exactly what the police need. I was completely caught up in the dual story lines of this novel, both of the children abandoned by a stepmother after their father has died, and the case that the police are trying to solve. This is a mystery novel with heart, sociological insight, and a rigorous plot. Highly recommended.

This was my first exposure to Kathleen George. What a pleasure! Complex, well-wrought characters (particularly the Phillips kids), interesting plot (not truly a mystery as the cover promises, but a crime story and character study), and evocative writing that really puts you in the mean streets of Pittsburgh. Highly recommended!

At a time when Pittsburgh PD Homicide Chief Richard Christie is in the hospital, two of his homicide detectives Colleen Greer and John Potocki assist the Narcotics Division on an investigation into the death of a young user from an overdose. At the same time the four Philips siblings are abandoned, but reject the idea of being split into foster homes. Just released from prison Nick Banks gives food to the four kids; a young teen, two tweeners, and a seven years old. Later he pays a street debt that takes him into drug trafficking that leads to his being shot. The four children pay back his kindness keeping Nick safe as he heals while Greer and Potocki follow clues to what went down. Although there is a well run investigation by the homicide unit while he is on the sidelines, the latest Christie police procedural is totally owned by the four Philips youngsters. They turn Pittsburgh upside down more than a Steeler Superbowl with their fierce loyalty to one another in a sea of mostly adult betrayal and treachery. Fans will root for them while seeking the more standard but super Christie Pittsburgh police procedural (see AFTERIMAGE and TAKEN). Harriet Klausner

George has crafted an unlikely but fascinating tale of the good, the bad and the ugly, a bizarre mix of the drug-infested, hope-starved streets of Pittsburgh's North Side and a small island of sanctuary where four abandoned children are committed to remaining together without adult supervision. The streets are littered with the detritus of society, boarded up buildings turned shooting galleries, a local pusher who disposes of anyone who threatens his income, street-corner junkies who sell his wares, a lifeless young man found with the needle still in his arm. While Narcotics is hovering over an important bust, two local Homicide cops, Colleen Greer and John Potocki, are distraught by their boss's cancer diagnosis and impending chemotherapy treatments. Temporarily drafted by the Narcotics Division, Colleen goes undercover and makes contact with the enigmatic, soulful Nick Banks, who is ironically linked to every part of this intricate story, particularly the Phillips children, who are the crux of the novel. Orphaned and abandoned by an itinerant stepmother, Meg, Joel, Laurie and Susannah survive their circumstances, determined to stay together and avoid the foster care system. Excellent students, they refuse to be victimized, carefully planning their responses to interfering adults. It is to George's credit that these children are not only believable but an integral element of the plot, an island of sanity in a landscape devoid of humanity. Like sly, if desperate sprites, Meg and Joel intervene on Nick's behalf in a dangerous situation, inadvertent angels of mercy. Is it possible for innocence to exist in such a place? Where nightmares thrive in the bleak heart of chaos, why not redemption? While violence stalks every street corner, stone killers in search of their prey, humanity is redeemed in the daily struggles of this intimate, loving family. But life is tough and there are no easy answers to the problems faced by the characters in this exceptional novel. In a taut thriller rife with menace, a compassionate and perceptive author peels away the ugly scars of crime and poverty, infusing tragedy with hope and cruelty with forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2009.