Close Case

Alafair Burke

For Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid's thirty-second birthday she gets an unusual gift: a homicide call out. The crime scene: the elite Hillside neighbourhood in Portland Oregon. The victim: star investigative reporter Percy Crenshaw who has been bludgeoned to death in his carport.

Tensions in the city have been running high. The previous week a police officer shot and killed an unarmed mother of two in what he claims was self-defence; in the aftermath protestors have waged increasingly agitated anti-police demonstrations. Crenshaw's death it seems is not
unrelated: within a matter of hours police arrest two young men who appear to have embarked on a crime spree in the aftermath of the protests. The case looks straightforward especially when one of the suspects confesses. But then the man recants claiming coercive police tactics and Samantha finds herself digging for more evidence.

Samantha's pursuit of the truth puts her at odds with the cops including her new live-in boyfriend Detective Chuck Forbes. Worse yet it puts her on the dangerous side of the line that can divide good cops from bad. Unsure who to trust Samantha tracks the path of clues left by Crenshaw ... a path that could lead her to the same fatal end.