THEY'RE GONE

The murders of two men who couldn’t be less like each other entangle their widows in a web of prostitution, blackmail, murder, and eventually each other.

Grant Thomas was a successful professional in the Beltway suburb of Vienna, Virginia; Hector Ramirez was a hit man who plied his secret trade around Baltimore. After they’re gunned down in separate incidents on the same night, freelance writer Deb Linh Thomas  goes into dazed mourning while bartender Cessy Castillo celebrates that the husband who’d beaten her for years is finally gone. Their paths begin an exquisitely slow convergence when Cessy is visited by two lowlifes who inform her that Hector had owed their boss $15,000, a debt that’s now passed to her, and FBI agent Levi Price tells Deb that Grant had dallied with a series of prostitutes, one of whom had milked him and his estate dry. As Cessy scrambles to find some way to deal with the collectors who won’t take no for an answer, Deb seeks her own answers by meeting with Maria Vasquez, the D.C. hooker who’d replaced her in her husband’s sex life and bank account. When Cessy’s resources prove inadequate to fend off the intensifying threats, her brother, Chris, rides to the rescue from Phoenix, his background as a contract killer guaranteeing fireworks even before the two women collide with each other. Barres stands out from the pack with his unusually sensitive handling of racial and sexual identities—Cessy's mother was Panamanian, Deb was born in Vietnam, and Deb's daughter, Kim, has a girlfriend—and his ruthless efficiency in sweeping supporting characters from the board the minute they’ve lost their ability to support anyone.

Smartly plotted, violent, and utterly absorbing.