Sambath "Sam" Long is a devoted father, a husband, and a homicide detective working in Lowell, Massachusetts. He is also a refugee who fled the killing fields of Cambodia for a better life in America. Now, Sam is tasked with finding the perpetrator of a murder of a Cambodian landlord. The case will take him back to the ghosts of his childhood and the nightmares of torture, repressive regimes, and the brutal death of his parents and his sister.

Bob Sanchez, author of two other crime novels, writes in tight prose, probing criminal elements of the Cambodian community in Lowell and the underlying distrust they have for police and the government in general. Although Sambath is one of them, speaks their language, knows their customs, and the pain of their past, he is also set apart. And Sam--a man in between--has his own issues finding acceptance in his adopted country; his father-in-law is openly hostile toward him and makes it clear he wishes his daughter had married someone else. Someone not Cambodian.

The characters are very well developed and Sanchez depicts Lowell, a city fallen from its former glory, its culture clashes, its hidden gangs, and the violence generated by greed and power, to bring the book to life. The writing is a spare and terse but it often segues into quite beautiful passages. "... the sunlight glared in mustard-colored discs off the roofs of cars; curdled air shimmered off the pavement. The smells seemed to form layers that swirled together when a car drove by: mown grass, exhaust fumes, sticky hot top, roses. Two cops worked the apartments down the street, but the neighborhood was otherwise quiet."
For anyone who enjoys a well-written and well researched murder mystery, this one is a winner. For those who enjoyed Jean Claude Izzo's gritty true-to-life "Marseilles Trilogy" or the painful memories in Robert Olen Butler's "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain," this book will not disappoint.