Some deaths refuse to be permanent.
Phillip doesn't know what happened to his wife. He believed Ellie was presumed dead in a plane crash—until there was no proof that she was even dead at all, and officials asked for her ashes back. Just to check, apparently. Phillip has been a person of interest and struggles with the people who have been giving him sideways glances, but he's more interested in finding out where Ellie might be. The journey to find her means looking through her old recordings, interviewing teenagers, and even going so far as to get information from government agents gone rogue.
While it takes a few pages to pull the pieces together, A.P. Foster's THE COVER UP: Zone of Deceit (Book 2) can certainly be read alone. This latter half of a two-part series is above all a detective story, and, although Phillip doesn't work with the police, he would make a good agent for sure.
The text has the world-weary noir of an old detective novel, with sentences showing how Phillip tries to work through the puzzle his world has become. The prose can build quickly when Phillip is anxious: "He had called me, yes. He'd probably sent notes. Sent people my way, sent incompetent people to look for Luz. But he was not at the top of the chain." It's fast, efficient, and gives us access to Phillip's psychological world. It's also unsentimental, character-driven, and largely lacking in atmosphere (a deliberate choice, perhaps)—which keeps the reader's focus squarely on Phillip's mind, rather than his surroundings.
Along with being a crime story, THE COVER UP exposes the vulnerability of street children, the lives they live, and the dangers they face from the adults around them. It explores how drugs can be used as a means of racialized oppression, how women and children remain vulnerable when people turn a blind eye to everyday evils simply to save their jobs. Also interesting, though Foster only touches on it, is the unequal diagnosis that women who have come back from combat zones receive—restricting their possibility of mental health care.
THE COVER UP is a thoughtful, slightly cynical read that social justice fans will love. It emphasizes the structural nature of abuse (without preaching) through the mechanics of plot itself. For readers who want their crime fiction to ask harder questions long after the case is closed, this novel both delivers and demands to be discussed.
A.P. Foster's THE COVER UP: Zone of Deceit (Book 2) is a cynical, socially conscious novel that asks hard questions while following the truth wherever it leads.
~ Nicci Attfield for IndieReader