PELECANOS TAKES THE.URBAN CRIME NOVEL AS FAR AS IT CAN GO... A true anthropologist of his gritty Washington tuff... Pelecanos does some astonishing character work on these cops, so sensitive and true that it even stands up to his vivid studies of the low-life criminals who live hard and die young in this violent world.

Twenty years ago, two young cops watched T. C. Cooke, a master detective, work a murder scene in a ragged community garden in a violent D.C. neighborhood. Today, a real estate rush has done everything to these streets but change them--and in the same garden, amid the same mayhem, a killer has left a body with an M.O. that the three men recognize fast. T. C. Cooke, long-since retired, is still haunted by the case he never solved. Gus Ramone is a decent cop, loyal husband, and father fighting for his son's future.And Dan Holiday hustles for a living after an ugly fall from grace.Now they come together again, hitting the new murder with a desperate, dangerous fervor. For on this hard, bloodstained soil,they have what no one ever gets: the seeds of a second chance...