Overview

Business magnate Thomas Farney and Detective Felix Kosmatka both want the same thing: to catch the monster who brutally murdered Farney's young grandson. Thomas, brutal and savvy, didn't become wealthy by playing by the rules or kowtowing to authority. Felix, smart but green, still believes in the integrity of law and order...and he believes solving this case may be his ticket out of his dying hometown. Felix must team up with seasoned detective Adam Shaffer to hunt the killer. Their investigation leads them into the past-when Thomas and his coal company owned the town, and when the riches beneath the surface belonged to anyone ruthless enough to claim them. Thomas made a multitude of enemies in those lawless days, and perhaps a few followed him into the present to exact their revenge. Set in the Pennsylvania Rust Belt in the 1970's, Felix's faith in his institutions is shaken when the killer reveals a difficult truth: the rich and powerful rarely pay for their own sins, and vengeance can sometimes look uncomfortably like justice.

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Reviews

""No one leaves the past behind in Boyer's gritty debut-it's an open wound to the heart. The shocking murder of a child is the final nail in a wider American tragedy engulfing the dried-up coal town. More than ever regional writing is defining crime fiction and Black Maria marks out Boyer as a voice you want to hear."" -Paul Burke, Crime Time ""Black Maria is a feat of literary muscle and grace. Boyer's electric rust-belt mystery probes the deep sub-territories of geography and psyche, always alive to the dissolving present and to time's dizzying sweep. The era is the '70s, the place a moribund Pennsylvania mining town vampired and poisoned by greed, where a young, ambitious cop and a worn-out one must solve the horrifying murder of a child. But the place where everything in Black Maria really happens is the deep, vast, coal-dark chambered maze that is the human heart."" -Jo Perry, author of The World Entire ""Black Maria is a blue-collar procedural narrated in the poetry of the damned. Boyer's debut depicts, unguarded, that we live in a damn mean world...and even the offspring of 'captains of industry' carry no immunity to wrath. If justice is a human right-all evidence to the contrary thus far-then it mandates that regular people, imperfect and salt-of-the-earth, serve as guarantors of said right. But Boyer reveals how justice is a shape-shifter and takes the form of the vessel by which it is delivered-and sometimes that cup runneth over."" -Matt Phillips, Thriller Award finalist and author of A Good Rush of Blood ""Christine Boyer's gritty and atmospheric debut, Black Maria, is a new noir classic. Add her Detective Felix Kosmatka to the list of unforgettable detectives. Like Felix, we're desperate to find out the truth, caught up in this winding, dark tale of greed and revenge. With tight, precise language and a mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end, Black Maria is your next must-read detective thriller."" -Danny Goodman, author of Amerikaland ""Things are never what they seem in a small town, where the powerful men can keep their secrets close until an unspeakable murder. A by-the-book rookie detective teams up with the seen-it-all veteran to unearth generational corruption as the killer's mind spirals out in search of revenge. Christine Boyer's prose is as disciplined and unflinching as her detective's dogged hunt for the truth. This is a masterfully written and powerful debut."" -E.F. Sweetman, author and editor of crime and noir stories ""Christine Boyer's Black Maria is a taut and tense '70s detective thriller about a horrific child murder in a rural Pennsylvania town. Its many haunted characters are expertly realized, especially its chilling villain. Boyer's realistic depiction of this mining community, as well as its long and dark history, hits emotionally epic heights. Black Maria is both ruthlessly unsentimental and deeply touching in its humanity. It's an addictive page-turner and a stunning debut. I couldn't put it down."" -Andrew Miller, author of Namaste Mart Confidential

Author Information

Christine Boyer's writing has been honored in both the Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology (Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2022) and the Best American Essays anthology (Notable Essays of 2020). Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including Jacked: A Crime Fiction Anthology, Weren't Another Other Way to Be: Outlaw Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Waylon Jennings, FOLIO, Little Patuxent Review, and Tahoma Literary Review. Black Maria is her first novel. Originally from Pennsylvania, Christine now lives in Massachusetts.

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