BEULAH HILL

Interracial thriller by Heffernan, known most recently for his tough-talking newspaper tale Cityside (1999). In 1933, during the Depression’s darkest days, poachers kill deer at night just to feed their families in Jerusalem’s Landing, Vermont. Also discovered eviscerated like a deer is the blond body of Royal Firman, seated under a tree just outside of town on Nigger Hill, a rise renamed Beulah Hill by its topmost tenant, Jehiel Flood. Jehiel’s daughter Elizabeth, the second Negro in the state to graduate from college, lives nearby with two sisters, and Constable Samuel Bradley, now passing for white, has his eye on her. He also means to save Jehiel from being named as Royal’s killer. Must Bradley face his own past while investigating this murder?

Nifty stuff, with big hooks from page one.