Newton hits the ground running with this debut thriller, an action-packed, noir-as-can-be account of a week in the life of Chicago top cop Patti Black, whose terrible past hits her in the face after 23 years. An orphan at 12, Patti was sent to the Calumet City foster home of Annabelle and Roland Ganz, who spouted religion while sexually abusing their charges. When Annabelle's body is found entombed in the wall of a building after a gang shootout and a kidnapped, maimed, and murdered assistant district attorney turns out to be a fellow Ganz foster child, Patti fingers Roland, father of the son she gave up for adoption after running away at 15. But she's also being trailed by the FBI and the Chicago police's Internal Affairs Division (IAD), who threaten charges and jail despite the police chief's special assignments and protection, and by contract killers. With her only allies being her former tactical unit sergeant and a glamorous reporter who wants the story, Patti seeks retribution on the chase of her life. Raw, heart-pounding, adrenalin-producing fiction doesn't get much better than this. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. [The author was inspired by real-life Chicago beat cop Patti Black.-Ed.]-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A female Chicago police officer confronts her complex past in Newton's absorbing debut novel. Patti Black, whose beat takes her daily into a gang-dominated ghetto, is as tough as any guy on her squad. But a secret from her past, which she guards desperately, makes her emotionally vulnerable. A foster child following the death of her parents, Patti spent several years in a foster home, enduring unending abuse at the hands of a maniacal preacher. At the age of 15, Patti bolted from the home and took to the streets, where she spent the next few years doing whatever it took to survive. She ended up with a taste for alcohol that she's still fighting, and memories that follow her like a rabid dog. When a raid on a gangster stronghold leads to the discovery of a dead woman who had been walled-up and abandoned while alive, Patti is forced to confront the evil she thought she left behind. She reluctantly partners with a well-known journalist to follow a trail of destruction. Patti's search for the fiend who stole her childhood takes her from Chicago to Calumet City to the Southwest desert. A galloping ride from first page to last. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Confrontational and uncompromising Patti Black, Chicago's most decorated cop, gets caught in a web of murder and betrayal in Newton's searing debut. When several unrelated cases threaten to reveal her horrific childhood as an abused runaway and teenage rape victim, Patti defies everybody to find Roland Ganz, her bete noir, who she suspects is behind the crimes; she must also locate the son she put up for adoption whom she thinks Roland is seeking. Accompanied by her sometime friend and rugby teammate, newspaper reporter Tracy Moens, she frantically follows a trail from Chicago to nearby Calumet City, the Arizona desert and back. The surprise ending includes a search on a houseboat moored on Lake Michigan during a tornado as well as a shootout in the depths of a disintegrating slum building. Newton, who based his heroine's character on a real Chicago police officer, creates a netherworld full of violent and duplicitous people. Pacing is all but absent amid the unrelenting action of the repetitive narrative. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

*Starred Review* Readers are likely to need a day off work after finishing Newton's breakneck debut they'll have been up all night. Patti Black, a real-life Chicago cop, serves as the inspiration for Patti Black, the heroine of this novel. In a bravura opening sequence, a raid on a Gangster Disciple-controlled building goes spectacularly wrong, leading to the discovery of a woman's body bricked-up in a basement wall. A day earlier, someone shot at the mayor, and the superintendent of police wants Black to investigate connections between the assassination attempt, a radical black alderman, and a casino-license vote. But Black's most urgent concern is the body, whose identity threatens to bring her horrific but buried past screaming back to life. This is dark and dizzying, bloody and bewildering, and highly original. Newton's research informs an authentic-sounding cop voice, and her ruminations on North Side versus South Side Chicago go deeper than the inevitable Cubs-Sox rivalry. It's not flawless: some plot points are a stretch, and Black's near-constant state of gun-waving meltdown flirts with overkill. But those who relish tortured heroines, unrelenting intensity, and full-throttle races through urban minefields will snatch this one up.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2007 Booklist