VOICE WITH NO ECHO

Two half siblings separated by time and past events forge a better relationship as they work a complex case.

County cop Jimmy Vega is recovering from several cases that almost ended his career. Doing a mitzvah for his girlfriend’s elderly neighbor, Holocaust survivor Max Zimmerman, involves him with Edgar Aviles, the handyman at the local synagogue, who’s about to be deported to El Salvador despite mitigating circumstances. Max wants to give Edgar sanctuary while his lawyer and his niece, Lissette, who works as a housekeeper for district attorney Glen Crowley, see if they can help. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s girlfriend, Adele Figueroa, a Harvard-educated lawyer who runs the immigrant aid center La Casa, also pitches in despite the long odds. Then Jimmy gets a call from a neighboring police department seeking his expertise in a possible case of suicide. The dead woman is Talia Crowley, the DA’s second wife. The whole case seems off to Jimmy from the start, but he faces enormous pressure to close it out, especially since Crowley has an alibi. Then Lissette vanishes, leaving behind only a wallet with a picture of two children. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sends in agent Michelle Carmelita Vega-Lopez, the half sister Jimmy has rarely seen since childhood, when he was growing up in the Bronx in the care of his mother and grandmother. Jimmy has had no particular feelings for Michelle ever since his father left his mother for hers, and he still has nightmares and unresolved issues from his early life. As Aviles stubbornly refuses to disclose information that might harm his family, Jimmy ruffles feathers in several police departments by persisting in his theory that Talia was murdered. Despite Jimmy’s and Michelle’s very different outlooks on deportations, she uses her contacts in ICE to uncover a nefarious scheme related to Talia’s murder.

The excellent mystery is almost upstaged by an anguished tale of old hurts and ripped-from-the-headlines political quarrels.