New Hope for the Dead

Description

Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to an affluent neighborhood after a man dies from an apparent overdose. His suspicion settles on the dead man’s alluring stepmother, but his attraction to her blurs the line between investigator, witness, and opportunist. The case arrives amid a broader collapse in Hoke’s precarious life: a new chief orders him out of his beloved decaying hotel suite, fifty unsolved murders land on his desk, his two teenage daughters unexpectedly need a home, and his partner faces an unwanted pregnancy. Short of money and housing, Hoke begins imagining that the stepmother might solve more than one problem. The novel mixes police procedure, noir, domestic comedy, and social satire into a portrait of compromised judgment under ordinary pressure.

Themes