"Remarkable stuff. Fans of Bill James' Harpur and Iles saga of cops and robbers are in for quite a treat"
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Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars fails with a task set to him by his former captain and the consequences look set to spark a gangland war in Montreal.
Montreal, 1978.
Newly promoted Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars attends the scene of seventeen break-ins at an apartment complex. Nothing more than stolen toasters. Cinq-Mars suspects that the burglaries are a trial run for a bigger heist . . . until he discovers a body pinned to a wall with a machete in one apartment.
When the former captain of Night Patrol, Armand Touton, receives a tip from an undercover informant in the Mafia, Cinq-Mars is ordered to intervene with a prisoner's release: the man must stay behind bars. He fails with the task and the immediate consequences are devastating.
While trying to remedy his failure, solve the mystery of the break-ins and the case of the dead body, a chilling aspect emerges . . . gangland Montreal is bracing for war.