Eddie Bourque is a political reporter for the Lowell Empire following a story that he hopes will bring him back to the big time. But his editor and the city politicians don't want to publish negative stories. In an effort to rebuild the dying city they are encouraging investors to tear down the local immigrant neighborhood and build expensive condos. When a story of the shooting of a drug addict in a local park is rewritten by an editor, he gets a bit testy.

Then a body is dredged from the river. It's his beat partner, Denny Nowlin and his publisher strangely refuses to follow up on the story. When Eddie is beaten and nearly killed, it gets personal. Despite the fact that the Lowell Empire won't publish any of it, he keeps digging. Eddie's refusal to accept the cover up of Danny's murder leads him deep into the Cambodian community in Lowell, particularly to a young woman bent on avenging her father's death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and to a Cambodian philanthropist who is not all that he seems.

I enjoyed the book and found the mystery more complex than I originally anticipated. It was filled with plenty of action, humor and mystery. The character development was strong and Eddie was a very interesting character. This is my second book by Mark Arsenault and I do plan to try another sometime. ( )