Author Description

"A boy rapping on his car window summons Portland police detective Joe Burgess to a fire at a nearby mosque, where he finds a screaming woman and her baby locked in a closet. The baby dies. The very young mother survives, but suffers from traumatic muteness. She has no ID and no one has reported her missing. Autopsy shows the gravely ill baby would have needed surgery to survive. Burgess suspects someone was trying to keep mother and baby away from hospitals that might have asked questions. As Burgess tries to identify his victims and learn who set the fire, he encounters cultural and language barriers. The mosque's Somali Imam claims to have no knowledge of the girl or of who wrote anti-Muslim graffiti on the building. Neighbors say the Muslims were sometimes harassed by men on motorcycles--a gang identified as the "Iron Angels," led by William "The Butcher" Flaherty. Life at home is complicated, with two newly adopted children and a sullen teenage son. Then suspects threaten Burgess's family, a threat that's amped up when a violent criminal is found parked near his house with guns and an abduction kit in the trunk. The key to Flaherty's storage locker leads to a stash of stolen guns and an armed confrontation; a distinctive ring leads to a fishing boat captain supplementing his income with gun and drug sales. Finally, a missing witness draws Burgess's team into a booby-trapped building, and the possibility that just as life is making Burgess into a normal "family man," it may be coming to an explosive end"--