All These Ashes

Russell Avery needs a story to tell.
The laid-off reporter turned private investigator is almost out of clients after he stood up against the Newark police officers whose problems he used to fix for a paycheck, exposing a scandal that left him on the wrong side of one of those thin blue lines. Desperate for work, Russell is as elated as he is skeptical when a detective shows up on his doorstep, asking him to look into one of the Brick City''s most haunting mysteries: The Twilight Four killings.

The detective tells Russell a story almost too good to be true, but maybe good enough to save his otherwise doomed journalism career if it is true. Supposedly, the wrong man was convicted in the brutal arson-murders that claimed four teenagers'' lives, and if Russell finds the right one, he''ll have the inside track on the kind of story that most reporters stake their careers on.

But things worth knowing don''t make themselves easy to find. As Russell starts untangling t