Through the Cracks

Barbara Fister has a knack for writing mystery novels that transcend time in the loveliness and grace of her prose but which have plots that seem to have been ripped from tomorrow's screaming headline. This is Fister's second Anni Koskinen mystery. THROUGH THE CRACKS opens with Anni running as if to save her life--she's just out for a morning jog, but Anni never does anything by halves and she does have ghosts pursuing her. Anni's an ex-cop who had to hang out her shingle as a private investigator because of an incorrigible sense of integrity: she testified against a cop who brutalized a witness and after that, she was no longer welcome in the Chicago PD. Anni gets hired by a rape victim, Jill McKenzie. Jill's haunted by the fact that she testified against the wrong man. A professor of sociology, Jill has mined the data available and identified seven more brutally violent rapes that mirror hers. Because the victims are of different races and live in different jurisdictions, the fact that a serial rapist has been preying on women for years in Chicago has fallen through the cracks of the system. Besides the brutality and the injuries, the victims have one other thing in common: the rapes all happened in the vicinity of one or another city park and the rapist smells like fresh grass. Anni's skeptical. The statute of limitations has expired on Jill's rape but Anni's forced by the data to do a little checking. Because another headline crime has feelings stirred up and there's an anti-immigration political dogfight going on, it's hard to coax victims to speak up, but Anni persists and soon uncovers other cases and victims to make an even dozen crimes. Then things get really scary, but Anni, a woman who is five-feet-nothing, absolutely won't be intimidated. Nor will she give up running in her neighborhood park... Make time to read this. I guarantee that you'll be unable to put it down and that you don't want to miss this one. This is very likely the best mystery to be published this year.

This dynamic thriller will keep a reader locked to its pages as the author has a gift for creating real people facing modern dilemmas. One is so caught up in the story one scarcely has time to note that the author is touching on both the raw wounds of the past and the controversies of the present. Author Barbara Fister can write a suspenseful thriller that leaves the reader thinking.

Somehow, I missed Barbara Fister's first Anni Koskinen mystery, In the Wind. After reading her latest one, Through the Cracks, I don't intend to miss any more. Anni Koskinen was a Chicago cop for ten years, before she violated the brotherhood of the thin blue line, and testified against a fellow cop. When she was shot, and her partner died, she finally left the force and became a private investigator. Now, she is skilled at assisting North Shore families to find their troubled kids. But, politics and a missing young woman are raising tempers in Chicago. And, a sweep of neighborhoods, led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), doesn't help relations. Anni even wakes up to find ICE breaking into her house, looking for a man who moved out a year earlier. Even with the troubles in Chicago, Anni is reluctant to drive to Iowa for a case. And, Jill McKenzie's request to open an investigation still finds her reluctant. Today, McKenzie is a respected professor, but twenty-three years earlier she was raped, beaten, and left for dead. Now, she wants Anni to look for her rapist, because Jill is convinced she identified the wrong man, a man who was just released after his conviction was overturned. Instead, McKenzie has used her academic skills to identify a pattern of a serial rapist, who may have been operating for years under the noses of the Chicago police. Anni Koskinen makes no promises, but as she asks a few questions, she finds other victims ready to talk. At the same time, the police and a power-hungry state's attorney have no interest in opening a can of worms. And, Anni's case could do just that, jeopardizing a current front-page investigation. If feelings are hot in Chicago right now, wait until the results of Anni's investigation become known. Barbara Fister gets the reader's adrenaline going on the first page, and she never lets go. She gives us tense situations, racial issues, politics, rape and murder, as well as that thin blue line. And, in advance of Arizona's S.B. 1070, she wrote of house invasions by ICE agents, the turmoil created by fear, and the unrest around illegal immigrants. How can one author fill a book with so much topical material, and keep the story riveting? Fister succeeds in a masterful story, Through the Cracks.

Over two decades ago in Chicago's Lincoln Park, a man raped Jill McKenzie. Teenage coke user Chase Taylor was arrested, convicted, but freed on appeal. Now a sociology professor, Jill has put together a profile about her attacker that leads her to believe he is a serial rapist. She hires private investigator Anni Koskinen to find this predator. She believes he has sexually battered at least seven women in the past decade in between his prison time for other crimes. Although Anni considers her client has an ax to grind, her social work background enables Koskinen to gently talk with the other rape victims. She follows those harrowing nightmarish discussions with meeting with other involved parties from the McKenzie case as she increasingly believes her client is right about her assessment. Anni makes this gritty dark Chicago investigative tale work as readers will empathize with her, the victims, and the cops trying to remove psychopaths off the streets. Character driven, aptly titled Through the Cracks is a wonderful tale starring a strong yet vulnerable heroine who the audience will admire and want more tales with her as the star. Harriet Klausner

_Through the Cracks_ confirms, yet again, that Barbara Fister is truly a major talent among current mystery writers. Her previous novels _On Edge_ and _In the Wind_ introduced two very different detectives, Konstantin Slovo and Anni Koskinen, both remarkably fleshed-out characters in equally realistic settings. These are not "cozy" mysteries--they are literary novels reflecting, repeatedly, a depth of insight into human character that is sometimes breathtaking--"breathtaking" as in "unexpected punch to the solar plexus." Fister's fans--may they multiply like rabbits!--now have additional cause for rejoicing, in that this new puzzler/thriller, _Through the Cracks_ brings back ex-cop turned private investigator Koskinen from _In the Wind_ for a new go-round, suggesting (I hope) a continuing series to follow. A couple things really stand out with Fister's writing. One is that she's not just capable of creating fully-rounded characters, but that she can strike off _dozens_ of them--distinctive, quirky, surprising, and yet still believably true to their own "takes" on life. And she intertwines all of them in ways that a reader can't anticipate, but that, once you see it pulled off you just get a gut feeling of "Yeah, that's right--I didn't see that coming, but yeah, that _fits_." In other words, Fister is just a strong on plotting as she is in characterization. (A lot of other mysteries I've read miss that very difficult balance. Anyone who reads much in the genre can provide multiple examples of their own here.) What's rewarding, too, is that this mystery deals with some deep issues--the plot concerns a hunt for a serial rapist; and Fister is remarkably attuned to the different psychologies of the surviving women, and their very different ways of getting on with their lives. It's a truism that most mysteries are ultimately about a search for justice; that being the case, if there is such a thing as justice to be found anywhere, Barbara Fister deserves an Edgar.