We All Fall Down

As the first and only woman police officer in the fading blue-collar town of Bridgeborough, Karen McCarthy knows she has a lot to prove - to her fellow cops and, even more dauntingly, to herself. So when she bungles a chance to arrest the number-one suspect in a cop-killing incident, Karen throws herself into the investigation in any way she can manage. Trouble is, the more she learns about the case, the less clear-cut everything seems to be. There is also a cabal of corrupt officers within the force to reckon with, and when Karen comes face-to-face with the killer himself, an already difficult case turns into a threat to her life as well as her police career. Already praised by top-notch novelists as a bold new thriller, We All Fall Down offers a realistically drawn woman cop who's neither an adorable ditz nor a fantasy superheroine. Karen McCarthy is a very tough, highly vulnerable woman who is still learning to deal with her demons. For her, every victory is hard-won, and carries a personal cost.

Steven Hart, an award-winning journalist and nonfiction author (The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway) makes his first try at fiction with We All Fall Down. Readers and critics agree: Hart and his heroine should come back, and soon.