Through the Cracks [Hardcover]

Barbara Fister (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2010

When Chicago private investigator Anni Koskinen takes on a new client, she finds herself working on an impossible case. After spending twenty years in prison, a black man convicted in a notorious rape case has  had his sentence overturned. The victim wants to know who was really responsible for the crime that scarred her life.  But even if Anni can find out who committed the brutal crime decades ago, a conviction will be impossible---unless the rapist has struck again.

The resourceful victim has uncovered evidence indicating that a serial rapist may still be at work, attacking women with ferocious anger. But as Anni digs deeper, the politically ambitious state’s attorney who prosecuted the original rape case insists that the conviction was solid. He believes there was no miscarriage of justice---other than that a violent felon has been released on a technicality.

As Anni’s cold case heats up, her friend Dugan, a CPD detective, is involved in a heater case of his own. An undocumented Mexican gang member has been arrested for the murder of a missing woman, and his uncertain fate has gripped the city and fueled anti-immigrant sentiment.

As both investigations unfold, the impact of racial prejudice radiates cracks through the criminal justice system, and it is through those cracks that Anni must try to glimpse the truth. 

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

An overturned conviction in an old rape case leads to Chicago PI Anni Koskinen (introduced in In the Wind, 2008) looking for the real offender. As an undergraduate, Jill McKenzie was the victim of the Lincoln Park Rapist, who also savagely beat her and killed her dog, a crime for which 16-year-old African American Chase Taylor was quickly charged. After Taylor's conviction is thrown out decades later, McKenzie, now a sociology professor, finds rape cases much like hers and believes her assailant is still out there attacking women. Hired by McKenzie, ex-cop Koskinen, who left the force after testifying againist a fellow officer, teams with Jerry Pozorski, the retired detective who had worked the McKenzie case, to build a new scenario despite resistance from the police and the politically ambitious state's attorney, who convicted Taylor. Librarian Fister's compelling story line is undermined by a hasty and scattered conclusion, but her portrayals of rape victims and a man wrongfully convicted are notable, and Anni Koskinen in action is a pleasure to watch. --Michele Leber

About the Author

Barbara Fister lives in rural Minnesota, where she works as a librarian at a small liberal arts college.  Please visit barbarafister.com.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (May 11, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312374925
• ISBN-13: 978-0312374921
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,644,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A native of Madison, Wisconsin, I've lived in Kentucky, Texas, the Middle East, North Africa, and on the coast of Maine. Now I live in rural Minnesota, where I work as an academic librarian at a liberal arts college. My research interests are wide, not to say idiosyncratic, but they all have to do, one way or another, with how various media shape our understanding of the world. I'm particularly interested in the role of anxiety in the formation of social issues - in life and in fiction. I explore the way communities sometimes embrace oversimplified expanations for evil in On Edge and how anxiety becomes a device for the suppression of dissent in In the Wind.

Good crime fiction is immensely satisfying. It's entertaining, has well-paced, involving stories and intriguing characters. It provides that little rush of adrenaline - which, as Val McDermid has said, is "a fabulous drug. It produces a great high, it's legal and it's free." For many readers, crime fiction is reassuring because in the end order is restored. But the best crime fiction does more than reassure. It helps form our understanding of social issues, and by drawing us into an exploration of that which disturbs us, it can give our deepest fears narrative form and meaning.

The photo of me was taken by author Mark Coggins at LCC Denver and is used with his blessing. You'll find some of his fine photography adorning his equally accomplished mysteries.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another darn good read, May 11, 2010

By 

Thomas Mann (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Through the Cracks (Hardcover)

_Through the Cracks_ confirms, yet again, that Barbara Fister is truly a major talent among current mystery writers. Her previous novels _On Edge_ and _In the Wind_ introduced two very different detectives, Konstantin Slovo and Anni Koskinen, both remarkably fleshed-out characters in equally realistic settings. These are not "cozy" mysteries--they are literary novels reflecting, repeatedly, a depth of insight into human character that is sometimes breathtaking--"breathtaking" as in "unexpected punch to the solar plexus." Fister's fans--may they multiply like rabbits!--now have additional cause for rejoicing, in that this new puzzler/thriller, _Through the Cracks_ brings back ex-cop turned private investigator Koskinen from _In the Wind_ for a new go-round, suggesting (I hope) a continuing series to follow. A couple things really stand out with Fister's writing. One is that she's not just capable of creating fully-rounded characters, but that she can strike off _dozens_ of them--distinctive, quirky, surprising, and yet still believably true to their own "takes" on life. And she intertwines all of them in ways that a reader can't anticipate, but that, once you see it pulled off you just get a gut feeling of "Yeah, that's right--I didn't see that coming, but yeah, that _fits_." In other words, Fister is just a strong on plotting as she is in characterization. (A lot of other mysteries I've read miss that very difficult balance. Anyone who reads much in the genre can provide multiple examples of their own here.) What's rewarding, too, is that this mystery deals with some deep issues--the plot concerns a hunt for a serial rapist; and Fister is remarkably attuned to the different psychologies of the surviving women, and their very different ways of getting on with their lives. It's a truism that most mysteries are ultimately about a search for justice; that being the case, if there is such a thing as justice to be found anywhere, Barbara Fister deserves an Edgar.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gritty dark Chicago investigative tale, May 14, 2010

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Through the Cracks (Hardcover)

Over two decades ago in Chicago's Lincoln Park, a man raped Jill McKenzie. Teenage coke user Chase Taylor was arrested, convicted, but freed on appeal.

Now a sociology professor, Jill has put together a profile about her attacker that leads her to believe he is a serial rapist. She hires private investigator Anni Koskinen to find this predator. She believes he has sexually battered at least seven women in the past decade in between his prison time for other crimes. Although Anni considers her client has an ax to grind, her social work background enables Koskinen to gently talk with the other rape victims. She follows those harrowing nightmarish discussions with meeting with other involved parties from the McKenzie case as she increasingly believes her client is right about her assessment.

Anni makes this gritty dark Chicago investigative tale work as readers will empathize with her, the victims, and the cops trying to remove psychopaths off the streets. Character driven, aptly titled Through the Cracks is a wonderful tale starring a strong yet vulnerable heroine who the audience will admire and want more tales with her as the star.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Don't-Miss Mystery, August 1, 2010

By 

Miz Ellen "all the letters of my real name" (Bovine Universe) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Through the Cracks (Hardcover)

Barbara Fister has a knack for writing mystery novels that transcend time in the loveliness and grace of her prose but which have plots that seem to have been ripped from tomorrow's screaming headline.

This is Fister's second Anni Koskinen mystery. THROUGH THE CRACKS opens with Anni running as if to save her life--she's just out for a morning jog, but Anni never does anything by halves and she does have ghosts pursuing her. Anni's an ex-cop who had to hang out her shingle as a private investigator because of an incorrigible sense of integrity: she testified against a cop who brutalized a witness and after that, she was no longer welcome in the Chicago PD.

Anni gets hired by a rape victim, Jill McKenzie. Jill's haunted by the fact that she testified against the wrong man. A professor of sociology, Jill has mined the data available and identified seven more brutally violent rapes that mirror hers. Because the victims are of different races and live in different jurisdictions, the fact that a serial rapist has been preying on women for years in Chicago has fallen through the cracks of the system. Besides the brutality and the injuries, the victims have one other thing in common: the rapes all happened in the vicinity of one or another city park and the rapist smells like fresh grass.

Anni's skeptical. The statute of limitations has expired on Jill's rape but Anni's forced by the data to do a little checking. Because another headline crime has feelings stirred up and there's an anti-immigration political dogfight going on, it's hard to coax victims to speak up, but Anni persists and soon uncovers other cases and victims to make an even dozen crimes.

Then things get really scary, but Anni, a woman who is five-feet-nothing, absolutely won't be intimidated. Nor will she give up running in her neighborhood park...

Make time to read this. I guarantee that you'll be unable to put it down and that you don't want to miss this one. This is very likely the best mystery to be published this year.