The Good Detective

Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Crime Novel of the Year "John McMahon is one of those rare writers who seem to have sprung out of nowhere. His first novel, The Good Detective, which is pretty much perfect, features a decent if flawed hero battling personal troubles while occupied with a murder case of great consequence to his community."--New York Times Book Review Introducing Detective P.T. Marsh in a swift and bruising debut where Elmore Leonard's staccato prose meets Greg Iles' Southern settings. How can you solve a crime if you've killed the prime suspect? Since the night his wife and son were killed in an accident, Detective P.T. Marsh can't see the line between bold moves and disastrous decisions. But when the former rising star of the Mason Falls, Georgia, police force decides to help out a woman by giving her abusive boyfriend a taste of his own medicine, he might have crossed a line. The next morning he gets called to the scene of his newest murder case, and is stunned to arrive at the house of a dead man, the very man he beat up the night before. As P.T. and his partner, Remy, begin to suspect the murder is connected to a local arson and the lynching of a teenage boy, P.T. realizes he might have killed the top suspect of this horrific crime. Amid rising racial tension and media scrutiny, P.T. uncovers something even deeper beneath the boy's murder--a conspiracy leading all the way back to the time of the Civil War. Risking everything to unravel the puzzle even as he fights off his own demons, P.T. races headlong toward an incendiary and life-altering showdown.