YOU CAN DIE TRYING

Eight months after racist cop Jack McGovern guns down 12-year-old liquor-store thief Lendell Washington and insists—despite the evidence—that the kid fired on him first, McGovern's remorseful suicide flushes out Mitchell Flowers, a cowed, guilty witness who corroborates McGovern's unlikely story and hires L.A. shamus Aaron Gunner (Fear of the Dark, Not Long for This World) to prove it. McGovern's LAPD colleagues—including Danny Kubo, an IAD investigator who owes him big—weren't crazy about McGovern, and don't welcome Gunner's attempts to exonerate him; and the Washington family— including Lendell's cousin Noah Ford, now doing time for the robbery- -are convinced he's a cop trying to torpedo their pending lawsuit. Only Deanna Lugo, the partner McGovern was breaking in when he responded to the scene, helps Gunner, in bed and out, untangle a nifty web of treachery and coverups to lay the case to rest for good. Haywood's freshest, leanest yet—and it won't be hurt by the Rodney King echoes.