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Slow-starting police procedural examines Main Line society through the eyes of an unusually sensitive working-class homicide detective.

After exploring social and personal pathologies among Massachusetts’s wealthy classes in two books featuring former DA Frances Pratt (Redemption, 2003, etc.), Geary now visits Philadelphia’s suburban upper-class WASP preserve in the persona of Lucy O’Malley, the daughter of a Boston cop who has been recently promoted to the Philadelphia police department’s homicide division. A habitué of Arch, an artsy Rittenhouse Square bar and grill within walking distance of PD headquarters, Lucy becomes romantically entangled with the bar’s owner, Archer Haverill. Scion of a dysfunctional old-money Main Line family, Archer is estranged from his mother, psychiatrist Morgan Reese. The rich/poor contrasts give the romance some spice as Geary shifts the focus to Reese, now the psychiatrist most likely to head the University of Pennsylvania’s new mental health institute. Troubled by the twins she gave up for adoption many years ago after an affair, Reese resolves to let them know who their mommy is—after all, they live practically around the corner with their chilly, loveless, but comfortably rich adoptive parents Faith and Bill Herbert. Then darkly depressed Foster Herbert, who has learned he was adopted but doesn’t know Reese is his biological mother, apparently commits suicide. O’Malley, who works Philadelphia only, doesn’t get involved professionally until about 80 pages later, when Reese is found dead in her car, seemingly shot and bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Geary is best when she balances O’Malley’s clue gathering with a wide-eyed exploration of existing and imaginary Philadelphia locations. She’s careful to show the Main Line rich as more than a sad, clueless crowd with too much money, and her cop is vulnerable enough to make mistakes, competent enough to keep plugging.

Strong scenic detail and a winning heroine make it easy to skip the tangled lineages, obvious red herrings, and too-good-to-be-true ending.