Through the Cracks Book

When Chicago private investigator Anni Koskinen takes on a new client, she finds herself working on an impossible case. After spending twenty years in prison, a black man convicted in a notorious rape case has  had his sentence overturned. The victim wants to know who was really responsible for the crime that scarred her life.  But even if Anni can find out who committed the brutal crime decades ago, a conviction will be impossible—-unless the rapist has struck again.

The resourceful victim has uncovered evidence indicating that a serial rapist may still be at work, attacking women with ferocious anger. But as Anni digs deeper, the politically ambitious state’s attorney who prosecuted the original rape case insists that the conviction was solid. He believes there was no miscarriage of justice—-other than that a violent felon has been released on a technicality.

As Anni’s cold case heats up, her friend Dugan, a CPD detective, is involved in a heater case of his own. An undocumented Mexican gang member has been arrested for the murder of a missing woman, and his uncertain fate has gripped the city and fueled anti-immigrant sentiment.

As both investigations unfold, the impact of racial prejudice radiates cracks through the criminal justice system, and it is through those cracks that Anni must try to glimpse the truth. 

Publishers Weekly

Sociology professor Jill McKenzie hires PI Anni Koskinen to find the man who raped her in Chicago's Lincoln Park 23 years earlier in Fister's strong sequel to In the Wind (2008). Chase Taylor, a 16-year-old high on coke who was in the park near the time of the assault, was convicted of the crime, but later freed on appeal. McKenzie has assembled data that suggests her attacker is a serial rapist responsible for at least seven additional attacks over a 10-year period that overlaps with Taylor's jail time. Part social worker and part sleuth, Koskinen connects with an array of well-drawn supporting characters, including other rape victims, the lead investigator on the McKenzie case, and the attorney who helped overturn Taylor's conviction. Thoughtful attention to the complexities of police work and social justice lift this gritty mystery well above the norm. Koskinen's empathy with both cops and victims as well as her fierce, brittle independence make her easy to root for. (May)