DEL RIO

In Rosenthal’s thriller, a California district attorney delves into a mystery involving her brother-in-law.

Callie McCall gave up private practice in San Francisco to become district attorney in her hometown of Del Rio in California’s run-down Central Valley. Her plan was to establish herself in the region and then run for higher office. But when a severed body part of a teenage migrant worker is found in a local grove, Callie realizes that her plans will have to wait. The grove is owned by her brother-in-law, Jim Fletcher, who also holds the state Senate seat she seeks. The more she looks into his business practices, the dirtier he appears, so she secretly follows him to a resort in western Mexico, where she meets Nathan Bernstein, an innocent caught up in a dangerous racket. He’s a widower from a wealthy San Francisco family who’s been hired to lead a bird-watching tour at the resort that Callie’s investigating. She soon discovers that Jim is involved in the smuggling of children—a business that gets him killed and puts Callie and Nathan in danger as traffickers follow them north. The strength of Rosenthal’s novel is in how she lets her two main characters evolve. At the beginning of the story, Callie wonders how her new post can aid her political ambitions, but by the end, she’s more concerned about how she can help others; meanwhile, Nathan gets beyond his debilitating grief and steps back into the world. Most of the characters that they encounter live in moral shades of gray, viewing the world through the lens of their own self-interest. Rosenthal also colorfully brings the Central Valley region to life as well as a criminal underground that Callie and, especially, Nathan are ill-equipped to comprehend. Overall, it’s a thought-provoking look at heinous crimes and their effects on larger society.

An intense tale of a self-involved attorney rediscovering her sense of compassion.