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Russell Avery #1
Line of Sight
All favors come with a cost, and after using what little favors he has in the Newark PD to get his private investigator's license, former crime reporter Russell Avery finds himself paying.
He spends his days reluctantly keeping sideways cops out of the crosshairs of the Internal Affairs department. Until Keyonna Jackson, a social justice activist, presents him with a troubling a made-for-YouTube cell phone snippet chronicling the same kind of questionable use of force that had set New York City, Ferguson, and Cleveland on fire in recent years. The same use of force that he's been covering up for Newark PD.
Now, the young black man who filmed this video is dead, and the more questions Russell asks, the less his cop buddies like him. For the first time in his life, Russell finds himself on the wrong side of the guys with the badges and guns. When details of the shooting become public - and a city with race riots in its DNA flirts with the idea of letting history repeat itself - Russell finds himself allying with street activists and gang members as he races to put together the biggest story of his life...before the city he needs to tell it to burns down around him.
He spends his days reluctantly keeping sideways cops out of the crosshairs of the Internal Affairs department. Until Keyonna Jackson, a social justice activist, presents him with a troubling a made-for-YouTube cell phone snippet chronicling the same kind of questionable use of force that had set New York City, Ferguson, and Cleveland on fire in recent years. The same use of force that he's been covering up for Newark PD.
Now, the young black man who filmed this video is dead, and the more questions Russell asks, the less his cop buddies like him. For the first time in his life, Russell finds himself on the wrong side of the guys with the badges and guns. When details of the shooting become public - and a city with race riots in its DNA flirts with the idea of letting history repeat itself - Russell finds himself allying with street activists and gang members as he races to put together the biggest story of his life...before the city he needs to tell it to burns down around him.
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First published March 10, 2020
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About the author
James Queally
10 books17 followersJames Queally is an award-winning crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Throughout his career, Queally has covered hundreds of homicides, as well as national use-of-force controversies and the Black Lives Matter Movement. His short stories have appeared in Thuglit, Crime Syndicate Magazine, Shotgun Honey and more.
(source: Amazon)
(source: Amazon)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
February 13, 2021
Time heals exactly no wounds, but it helps you get used to the scars.
Russell Avery is a licensed PI who describes himself as more of a problem solver, negotiator, arbitrator, maybe a referee; a man looking for heroes and villains in a city that only bred survivors. When activist Keyonna Jackson asks him to look into the shooting death of a drug dealer, he uncovers more than he bargained for and more gray than black and white.
What I thought the author did really well was illuminate how the sides in this debate don’t understand the other, well-meaning police do more harm than good, social activists may not always be in it for the good fight. A vividly drawn protest, one that puts the reader in the thick of it, was chilling in its depiction of how the intentions of many can be thwarted by the actions of a few.
You ever stop to think that every time this happens, no one is 100 percent right? This isn’t cops and robbers. There is some truth to your anger and some truth to theirs.
The story all takes place over a few days in Newark, NJ, a city of complication after complication where the victim was also a criminal, the activist sometimes an opportunist and where the good cop didn’t necessarily mean he was a good man.
Maybe it was time to stop judging police and protestors, and just start judging people.
I thought this was a solid debut from the pen of a journalist, fast paced with superb writing. While the subject is timely and Queally manages to straddle the line, he also went off the rails occasionally which made for some uneven reading. Recommended for fans of crime fiction that like their narrators a bit jaded, but with their hearts in the right place.
Russell Avery is a licensed PI who describes himself as more of a problem solver, negotiator, arbitrator, maybe a referee; a man looking for heroes and villains in a city that only bred survivors. When activist Keyonna Jackson asks him to look into the shooting death of a drug dealer, he uncovers more than he bargained for and more gray than black and white.
What I thought the author did really well was illuminate how the sides in this debate don’t understand the other, well-meaning police do more harm than good, social activists may not always be in it for the good fight. A vividly drawn protest, one that puts the reader in the thick of it, was chilling in its depiction of how the intentions of many can be thwarted by the actions of a few.
You ever stop to think that every time this happens, no one is 100 percent right? This isn’t cops and robbers. There is some truth to your anger and some truth to theirs.
The story all takes place over a few days in Newark, NJ, a city of complication after complication where the victim was also a criminal, the activist sometimes an opportunist and where the good cop didn’t necessarily mean he was a good man.
Maybe it was time to stop judging police and protestors, and just start judging people.
I thought this was a solid debut from the pen of a journalist, fast paced with superb writing. While the subject is timely and Queally manages to straddle the line, he also went off the rails occasionally which made for some uneven reading. Recommended for fans of crime fiction that like their narrators a bit jaded, but with their hearts in the right place.
July 29, 2020
Queally’s Line of Sight is a terrific, fast-paced, Hard-edged, gritty crime thriller that is well written and engrossing. Queally has been a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times and he makes his protagonist, Russell Avery, a laid-off crime reporter, now making a living as a private eye who figures out how to quickly and efficiently end police misconduct cases.
The setting for Line of Sight, however, is not Los Angeles, but trendy Newark, New Jersey. Avery is local guy, still with a few connections from his reporter days. You get the real sense that Avery is not about to leave town when things go bad. He’s loyal to it and is somehow still trapped and emeshed in the tragedy of Newark.
The story touches on controversial use-of-force shootings, but opens up a wider nuanced lens, showing all points of view. This includes the officers in a no-win situation in a late night confrontation where a suspect reaches for his waistband to the so-called community activists who want to use every officer-involved shooting as a point to make them media stars regardless of the fallout in the community and regardless of the often difficult facts.
Avery may have left reporting, albeit involuntarily, but his heart is still in being a muckracking reporter, ferreting out the truth. And, ultimately, it’s a story about corruption and power and truth.
Not sure if this novel was planned as a one-off or the start of a series, but this reader would like to see more.
The setting for Line of Sight, however, is not Los Angeles, but trendy Newark, New Jersey. Avery is local guy, still with a few connections from his reporter days. You get the real sense that Avery is not about to leave town when things go bad. He’s loyal to it and is somehow still trapped and emeshed in the tragedy of Newark.
The story touches on controversial use-of-force shootings, but opens up a wider nuanced lens, showing all points of view. This includes the officers in a no-win situation in a late night confrontation where a suspect reaches for his waistband to the so-called community activists who want to use every officer-involved shooting as a point to make them media stars regardless of the fallout in the community and regardless of the often difficult facts.
Avery may have left reporting, albeit involuntarily, but his heart is still in being a muckracking reporter, ferreting out the truth. And, ultimately, it’s a story about corruption and power and truth.
Not sure if this novel was planned as a one-off or the start of a series, but this reader would like to see more.
January 18, 2020
Line of Sight is the debut novel of award-winning crime reporter James Queally. The description of this book by the publisher spoke of questionable use of force, the shooting of an unarmed young black kid, and of race riots.
When I read and combined this, one name popped in front of my mind: David Simon. And with that name came memories of The Wire, Homicide, The Corner... This, unfairly, set my expectations pretty high.
Line of Sight is a fiction. It tells us the story of Russell Avery, who used to cover the crime beat for one of Newark’s newspapers before being thrown out of the building for disagreeing with his editor. He then used his police contacts to expedite a P.I license and, as a result, works mainly as a fixer for officers in the major crimes unit who might run into trouble with internal affairs.
That is, until the day Keyonna Jackson, an activist, asks him to take on the case of a client whose son, a small time dealer, has been shot in a cemetery. The father is convinced cops did it, as a few days prior, the victim had filmed the shooting of an unarmed black suspect by an officer.
Russell Avery enters a race against time in order to solve the murder before the family and Jackson decide to seek justice another way, by releasing the cell phone video to the media and setting the city aflame. And he uses all contacts at his disposal, from cops, journalists, to gang members and bosses in order to try and unravel the chain of events which led to the death of Kevin Mathis.
Reading this book, I quickly realized it had nothing to do with The Wire. Not that there isn’t social commentary, but the strength of the story resides mainly in Avery’s investigation. Line of Sight is foremost a crime thriller. A thriller difficult to put down (even if the pacing gets a bit slow around the middle of the book, before picking up again).
Nevertheless, once I finished reading it, I still had David Simon in mind and wondered why. I found out my lingering feeling had more to do with Simon’s account of his year trailing Baltimore’s homicide detectives (Homicide : A year in the Killing Streets) than with his works of fiction.
Everything in this novel, from the description of events, of cops and brass, of journalists, corner kids, gangbangers, the town and its streets must have been fed by James Queally’s years on the crime beat. And through the eyes of Russell Avery, we probably get to witness some of what the author experienced during his career, including his feelings, uncertainties and doubts.
This is a book immersing the reader in an engaging investigation, led by a three dimensional protagonist, set on an authentic background only someone who has spent years in the field could have brought to such a story.
So this isn’t The Wire after all, but I still highly recommend reading it.
Thanks to Polis Books and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for this unbiased review.
When I read and combined this, one name popped in front of my mind: David Simon. And with that name came memories of The Wire, Homicide, The Corner... This, unfairly, set my expectations pretty high.
Line of Sight is a fiction. It tells us the story of Russell Avery, who used to cover the crime beat for one of Newark’s newspapers before being thrown out of the building for disagreeing with his editor. He then used his police contacts to expedite a P.I license and, as a result, works mainly as a fixer for officers in the major crimes unit who might run into trouble with internal affairs.
That is, until the day Keyonna Jackson, an activist, asks him to take on the case of a client whose son, a small time dealer, has been shot in a cemetery. The father is convinced cops did it, as a few days prior, the victim had filmed the shooting of an unarmed black suspect by an officer.
Russell Avery enters a race against time in order to solve the murder before the family and Jackson decide to seek justice another way, by releasing the cell phone video to the media and setting the city aflame. And he uses all contacts at his disposal, from cops, journalists, to gang members and bosses in order to try and unravel the chain of events which led to the death of Kevin Mathis.
Reading this book, I quickly realized it had nothing to do with The Wire. Not that there isn’t social commentary, but the strength of the story resides mainly in Avery’s investigation. Line of Sight is foremost a crime thriller. A thriller difficult to put down (even if the pacing gets a bit slow around the middle of the book, before picking up again).
Nevertheless, once I finished reading it, I still had David Simon in mind and wondered why. I found out my lingering feeling had more to do with Simon’s account of his year trailing Baltimore’s homicide detectives (Homicide : A year in the Killing Streets) than with his works of fiction.
Everything in this novel, from the description of events, of cops and brass, of journalists, corner kids, gangbangers, the town and its streets must have been fed by James Queally’s years on the crime beat. And through the eyes of Russell Avery, we probably get to witness some of what the author experienced during his career, including his feelings, uncertainties and doubts.
This is a book immersing the reader in an engaging investigation, led by a three dimensional protagonist, set on an authentic background only someone who has spent years in the field could have brought to such a story.
So this isn’t The Wire after all, but I still highly recommend reading it.
Thanks to Polis Books and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for this unbiased review.
May 29, 2020
Topical Newark Noir
Review of the Agora Books hardcover edition (March 2020)
[3.5]
Sadly, this book about a fictional police shooting caught on video and the later suspicious death of the camera operator is too often paralleled by situations in the daily news, such as the current situation in Minneapolis, Minnesota (late May 2020 as I write this). Author Queally captures the views of gang life, community activism and the thin blue line of enforcement here in an effective manner which keeps you guessing as to the causes and effects of the resulting tragedy.
My rating is perhaps a bit reserved as I somehow didn't find the protagonist former reporter / current private investigator completely believable in his conflicting allegiances throughout. He is so "in" with the police department that former associates there help him shortcut his way to a PI license, meanwhile he is seemingly working against them with his former almost-fiancée and his ties to the activism community. But for a first novel some bumps are to be expected. Still a good first outing, and sadly constantly made to be topical too frequently these days.
Trivia and Links
Line of Sight is one of the initial titles from Agora Books, a new imprint of independent publisher Polis Books which will be "a diversity-focused imprint devoted to crime and noir fiction." Other initial releases from Agora Books are Three-Fifths (September 2019) by John Vercher, Remember (October 2019) by Patricia Smith, The Ninja Daughter (November 2019) by Tori Eldridge, Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (February 2020), Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem by Gary Phillips (February 2020), and Both Sides: Stories From the Border edited by Gabino Iglesias (April 2020). Watch for further releases from Agora Books at the Polis Books website.
Review of the Agora Books hardcover edition (March 2020)
[3.5]
Sadly, this book about a fictional police shooting caught on video and the later suspicious death of the camera operator is too often paralleled by situations in the daily news, such as the current situation in Minneapolis, Minnesota (late May 2020 as I write this). Author Queally captures the views of gang life, community activism and the thin blue line of enforcement here in an effective manner which keeps you guessing as to the causes and effects of the resulting tragedy.
My rating is perhaps a bit reserved as I somehow didn't find the protagonist former reporter / current private investigator completely believable in his conflicting allegiances throughout. He is so "in" with the police department that former associates there help him shortcut his way to a PI license, meanwhile he is seemingly working against them with his former almost-fiancée and his ties to the activism community. But for a first novel some bumps are to be expected. Still a good first outing, and sadly constantly made to be topical too frequently these days.
Trivia and Links
Line of Sight is one of the initial titles from Agora Books, a new imprint of independent publisher Polis Books which will be "a diversity-focused imprint devoted to crime and noir fiction." Other initial releases from Agora Books are Three-Fifths (September 2019) by John Vercher, Remember (October 2019) by Patricia Smith, The Ninja Daughter (November 2019) by Tori Eldridge, Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (February 2020), Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem by Gary Phillips (February 2020), and Both Sides: Stories From the Border edited by Gabino Iglesias (April 2020). Watch for further releases from Agora Books at the Polis Books website.
July 25, 2023
Awesome debut!
This one was mentioned on Michael Connelly's webpage and did not disappoint!
The author is an actual LA Times journo and his experience shows in the writing and story.
This one was mentioned on Michael Connelly's webpage and did not disappoint!
The author is an actual LA Times journo and his experience shows in the writing and story.
July 14, 2020
'Line of Sight', by new author and ex-newspaper guy James Queally, is OK as a first novel but there's a lot to improve upon. The only thing that kept me going with it was the timeliness of the plot.
The narrator and main character, Nick Avery, is himself an ex-newspaper guy now working his way down the food chain as a PI in Newark doing all sorts of stuff, the most lucrative being helping cops who are in trouble with Internal Affairs get off the hook. As a former crime reporter, he has contacts in both the media world and the police department, which he mines constantly for work opportunities. The plot of Line of Sight involves Avery being pulled into investigating, for a grieving father, the shooting death of his drug-dealing son. The father recognizes his son's criminal ways but also doubts the official story of his shooting. He also has in his possession his son's phone video of a police shooting of another drug dealer which didn't appear to be justified. Avery takes the case and has to balance his desire to find the truth with his allegiance to his police friends. He leverages his connections to discover the truth, along the way getting his ass kicked a few times by various gang-bangers and cops he needs for information. Things wrap up nicely, and bloodily, at the end and we'll see if there's a series in this character.
The writing is just OK, pretty sparse and colloquial with decent dialogue. My problem is that this character has been done an order of magnitude better by writers like George Pelecanos and Robert Crais (Pelecanos the most apt comparison, IMO). There are lots of PI characters out there with interesting stories, so Queally needs to find something more interesting with which to distinguish his character. Here's hoping he does- I love the genre and more voices are always good.
The narrator and main character, Nick Avery, is himself an ex-newspaper guy now working his way down the food chain as a PI in Newark doing all sorts of stuff, the most lucrative being helping cops who are in trouble with Internal Affairs get off the hook. As a former crime reporter, he has contacts in both the media world and the police department, which he mines constantly for work opportunities. The plot of Line of Sight involves Avery being pulled into investigating, for a grieving father, the shooting death of his drug-dealing son. The father recognizes his son's criminal ways but also doubts the official story of his shooting. He also has in his possession his son's phone video of a police shooting of another drug dealer which didn't appear to be justified. Avery takes the case and has to balance his desire to find the truth with his allegiance to his police friends. He leverages his connections to discover the truth, along the way getting his ass kicked a few times by various gang-bangers and cops he needs for information. Things wrap up nicely, and bloodily, at the end and we'll see if there's a series in this character.
The writing is just OK, pretty sparse and colloquial with decent dialogue. My problem is that this character has been done an order of magnitude better by writers like George Pelecanos and Robert Crais (Pelecanos the most apt comparison, IMO). There are lots of PI characters out there with interesting stories, so Queally needs to find something more interesting with which to distinguish his character. Here's hoping he does- I love the genre and more voices are always good.
October 13, 2024
"Nosotros comprendemos la muerte mejor que la mayoría, ¿Verdad?... Yo la investigo. Tú escribes sobre ella."
October 16, 2020
LINE OF SIGHT is an impressive blend of thematic depth, admirable ambition, and unimpeachable authority that has a lot to say about journalism, racial tensions, urban corruption and civic pride. And it has some weaknesses that keep it in the "merely really pretty good" category and out of the "great" one.
The good stuff is really pretty really good, however. Queally, an East Coast native who worked for the Star-Ledger newspaper of Newark before making a national name for himself as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, shows that you CAN go home again. And shows it ably in his story of Russell Avery, a former journalist turned private eye who mostly makes his living fixing legal problems for Newark cops who cross the line—and in the process, for the people whose lines got crossed. ("In the span of five minutes I’d helped a dirty cop keep his job and likely financed a month of cocaine sales for Antonio" and "Whole lot of vice detectives who claimed their wives were cheating and asked me to follow them. Most just wanted me to keep tabs on their beloved so they could sneak off with their own side pieces.")
Bu it's hard to live in the gray where there so much black and white all around, however. And so, when a community activist comes to him with a story about Newark cops — possibly the same crew Avery works for — being responsible for the death of a couple of black teen drug dealers, he's got to pick a side. And he's got to hope it's not just the right one but the last one standing.
Queally, through Avery, is appealingly clear-eyed about both his city and his former profession — Avery constantly leans on connections forged through his newspaper days along his winding path to what really happened. LINE OF SIGHT is consistently quotable in that regard:
"Reporters are, by trade, egomaniacs. We can be sympathetic, empathetic, careful and concerned about the people whose stories we tell. But part of the drive to uncover some amazing tale is knowing your name might be synonymous with the story."
"When the paper got all web-savvy, I should have seen the change coming. Should have known (the editor would) push the parent company’s agenda because he had a house in Short Hills with a mortgage that made my student loan debt look like the cost of a middling first date."
"The hardest part of cracking a story isn’t learning something you’re not supposed to know, it’s figuring out when you can share that something. Journalists are notoriously terrible at keeping secrets. It’s why no one can even think about sleeping with a fellow reporter without an entire newsroom knowing all your kinks."
"The newspaper had mutated from the place that raised me, the place that held the city accountable, to an awkward appendage that waived around and counted clicks, using some impossible calculus to determine news."
Queally also knows Newark, and how it works:
"Abrasive was Newark’s native tongue."
"Then there’s an administrative hearing. You know how often that ends with the cop getting in trouble? Carry the one, round down to zero, and it’s right around never."
"It would be the first time in at least five years that homicides climbed above the century mark, and Newark’s popular mayor, who everyone expected would run forSenator soon, had declined comment for the story, probably because he was too busy strangling the police director to pick up the phone."
"Your son isn’t the first person whose death I’ve seen go unrecognized in this city, and we both know it won’t be the last. That’s Newark, sadly."
Cops, journalists, crime, big city, elusive truth. Queally keeps this five-ring circus moving in fine working order for the most part, weaving a complicated but not impossible-to-tangle plot. And when everything and everyone is finally dragged from the darkness into the disinfecting sunshine, what's revealed are shades of gray everybody can live with — or at least begin working with. And Russell Avery, more than half bent as the book begins, finds a moral equilibrium from which he can begin walking straight again.
Pretty good stuff. But ... not great. Why? Three key reasons:
— The trope of The One White Man Who Can Talk to Black People is an oily and uncomfortable one, and especially so in 2020. Maybe this says more about publishing than storytelling, but I wish somebody would speak squarely to this question: Why do book readers require a white interpreter for Black America? Where's the black writer who's being given a publishing contract to tell the story of Black Newark? The Great White Interpreter of Newark was previously and more cringe-inducingly rendered in the Carter Ross mysteries by Brad Parks — like Queally, a former Star-Ledger scribe — and one would have hoped that racial sensitivities would have improved in the decade since Parks' first Carter Ross book and Queally's, given all that's happened to expose the peeling veneer in race relations during that time. At least Queally is less gleeful about it than Parks, whose Ross novels lean wolfishly into full-blown White Savior Syndrome. Maybe it's not fair that LINE OF SIGHT has to live in that shadow. But maybe it's not fair that Newarks national image is still largely mired in the city's 1967 race riots, either.
Maybe the question is better parked with Polis Books, which has otherwise proven to be an aware and enlightened book publisher about matters of race (witness its Edgar Award-nominated THREE-FIFTHS, by John Vercher, truly a remarkable achievement).
— There's a chunky-style quality o the prose, an accretion of overstuffed sentences, that often acts as a drag on what should be a page-turning genre novel. Some examples:
"A stream of leaves and withered cigarette filters swirled along the sidewalk as I walked up to the group, the wind making a rustling sounding like a bag of potato chips being used as a punching bag."
"The glass slid down to reveal one half of a salt-white chin strap beard and a set of crow’s feet stacked like a stepladder. The face turned slowly, bringing the matching features on the other side into view, all anchored around browned lips that were always puckered into a coiled spring."
"I put the device into burst mode, got more than a few shots of Faltz wrestling the wannabe pit boss into submission, and lowered the camera just in time to see a combat boot slice within a few centimeters of Dina’s face, just close enough to tussle those long locks I’d been fawning over upstairs."
"She shot me a sideways look as we sized each other up, the burning hockey paraphernalia highlighting us in smoke as the rogue protesters kept doing damage nearby."
They read a lot like the sentences that reporters write when they're trying to compress an accumulation of facts into a prescribed newshole space. Say, cramming 25 inches of material into a 15-column-inch space. I did that a lot myself in my own reporting career, and the result looked a lot like Queally's fictional rendering of a news story deep into LINE OF SIGHT (possible spoiler alert):
"The shooting death of a former Newark homicide investigator was linked to a widening corruption scandal that could lead to the retrial of hundreds of defendants and has reignited calls for federal oversight of the state’s largest police department, according to multiple city officials and law enforcement sources."
I get it, kind of. Queally wrote LINE OF SIGHT while working as a reporter, and as an ex-journo myself, I can see how difficult it must be to toggle between Reporter Brain and Novelist Brain in the course of a single day, day after day. My advice would be the same advice I give many of my author clients — read your sentences aloud, see how they flow into one another, see how they can best be crafted to create a sense of glide on a current of perpetually pleasant uncertainty.
— The copy-editing and proofreading in LINE OF SIGHT is terrible. Unforgivably bad. No other way to put it. Whoever had the job of red-penning this manuscript had an outright indifference or ignorance regarding commas, hyphens and homonyms. Among other things. A sampling of several dozen objective errors I highlighted in the text:
"Frank was on top of me in seconds, pinning me down and reigning blow after blow...."
"I nearly jumped out of my seat when I heard the wrap of someone’s knuckles against my window."
"I waived him off and tried to figure out who I was talking to."
"Whoever was following me wasn’t being terribly discrete about it."
"Collen" (instead of Colleen)
"Alright" (no style guide supports this as a preferred usage over "all right.")
"'I don’t have a problem with protesting Dina,' I said."
"For all her sometimes radical talk, Key could have made money in public relations if she wanted too."
"None of the nonsense that will make my editors heads spin.”
Queally doesn't deserve such shoddy service. My hope is that his publisher fixes the ebook edition right away, and does the same for the print edition should it sell well enough to merit a second printing. Which, on its merits, it does.
The good stuff is really pretty really good, however. Queally, an East Coast native who worked for the Star-Ledger newspaper of Newark before making a national name for himself as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, shows that you CAN go home again. And shows it ably in his story of Russell Avery, a former journalist turned private eye who mostly makes his living fixing legal problems for Newark cops who cross the line—and in the process, for the people whose lines got crossed. ("In the span of five minutes I’d helped a dirty cop keep his job and likely financed a month of cocaine sales for Antonio" and "Whole lot of vice detectives who claimed their wives were cheating and asked me to follow them. Most just wanted me to keep tabs on their beloved so they could sneak off with their own side pieces.")
Bu it's hard to live in the gray where there so much black and white all around, however. And so, when a community activist comes to him with a story about Newark cops — possibly the same crew Avery works for — being responsible for the death of a couple of black teen drug dealers, he's got to pick a side. And he's got to hope it's not just the right one but the last one standing.
Queally, through Avery, is appealingly clear-eyed about both his city and his former profession — Avery constantly leans on connections forged through his newspaper days along his winding path to what really happened. LINE OF SIGHT is consistently quotable in that regard:
"Reporters are, by trade, egomaniacs. We can be sympathetic, empathetic, careful and concerned about the people whose stories we tell. But part of the drive to uncover some amazing tale is knowing your name might be synonymous with the story."
"When the paper got all web-savvy, I should have seen the change coming. Should have known (the editor would) push the parent company’s agenda because he had a house in Short Hills with a mortgage that made my student loan debt look like the cost of a middling first date."
"The hardest part of cracking a story isn’t learning something you’re not supposed to know, it’s figuring out when you can share that something. Journalists are notoriously terrible at keeping secrets. It’s why no one can even think about sleeping with a fellow reporter without an entire newsroom knowing all your kinks."
"The newspaper had mutated from the place that raised me, the place that held the city accountable, to an awkward appendage that waived around and counted clicks, using some impossible calculus to determine news."
Queally also knows Newark, and how it works:
"Abrasive was Newark’s native tongue."
"Then there’s an administrative hearing. You know how often that ends with the cop getting in trouble? Carry the one, round down to zero, and it’s right around never."
"It would be the first time in at least five years that homicides climbed above the century mark, and Newark’s popular mayor, who everyone expected would run forSenator soon, had declined comment for the story, probably because he was too busy strangling the police director to pick up the phone."
"Your son isn’t the first person whose death I’ve seen go unrecognized in this city, and we both know it won’t be the last. That’s Newark, sadly."
Cops, journalists, crime, big city, elusive truth. Queally keeps this five-ring circus moving in fine working order for the most part, weaving a complicated but not impossible-to-tangle plot. And when everything and everyone is finally dragged from the darkness into the disinfecting sunshine, what's revealed are shades of gray everybody can live with — or at least begin working with. And Russell Avery, more than half bent as the book begins, finds a moral equilibrium from which he can begin walking straight again.
Pretty good stuff. But ... not great. Why? Three key reasons:
— The trope of The One White Man Who Can Talk to Black People is an oily and uncomfortable one, and especially so in 2020. Maybe this says more about publishing than storytelling, but I wish somebody would speak squarely to this question: Why do book readers require a white interpreter for Black America? Where's the black writer who's being given a publishing contract to tell the story of Black Newark? The Great White Interpreter of Newark was previously and more cringe-inducingly rendered in the Carter Ross mysteries by Brad Parks — like Queally, a former Star-Ledger scribe — and one would have hoped that racial sensitivities would have improved in the decade since Parks' first Carter Ross book and Queally's, given all that's happened to expose the peeling veneer in race relations during that time. At least Queally is less gleeful about it than Parks, whose Ross novels lean wolfishly into full-blown White Savior Syndrome. Maybe it's not fair that LINE OF SIGHT has to live in that shadow. But maybe it's not fair that Newarks national image is still largely mired in the city's 1967 race riots, either.
Maybe the question is better parked with Polis Books, which has otherwise proven to be an aware and enlightened book publisher about matters of race (witness its Edgar Award-nominated THREE-FIFTHS, by John Vercher, truly a remarkable achievement).
— There's a chunky-style quality o the prose, an accretion of overstuffed sentences, that often acts as a drag on what should be a page-turning genre novel. Some examples:
"A stream of leaves and withered cigarette filters swirled along the sidewalk as I walked up to the group, the wind making a rustling sounding like a bag of potato chips being used as a punching bag."
"The glass slid down to reveal one half of a salt-white chin strap beard and a set of crow’s feet stacked like a stepladder. The face turned slowly, bringing the matching features on the other side into view, all anchored around browned lips that were always puckered into a coiled spring."
"I put the device into burst mode, got more than a few shots of Faltz wrestling the wannabe pit boss into submission, and lowered the camera just in time to see a combat boot slice within a few centimeters of Dina’s face, just close enough to tussle those long locks I’d been fawning over upstairs."
"She shot me a sideways look as we sized each other up, the burning hockey paraphernalia highlighting us in smoke as the rogue protesters kept doing damage nearby."
They read a lot like the sentences that reporters write when they're trying to compress an accumulation of facts into a prescribed newshole space. Say, cramming 25 inches of material into a 15-column-inch space. I did that a lot myself in my own reporting career, and the result looked a lot like Queally's fictional rendering of a news story deep into LINE OF SIGHT (possible spoiler alert):
"The shooting death of a former Newark homicide investigator was linked to a widening corruption scandal that could lead to the retrial of hundreds of defendants and has reignited calls for federal oversight of the state’s largest police department, according to multiple city officials and law enforcement sources."
I get it, kind of. Queally wrote LINE OF SIGHT while working as a reporter, and as an ex-journo myself, I can see how difficult it must be to toggle between Reporter Brain and Novelist Brain in the course of a single day, day after day. My advice would be the same advice I give many of my author clients — read your sentences aloud, see how they flow into one another, see how they can best be crafted to create a sense of glide on a current of perpetually pleasant uncertainty.
— The copy-editing and proofreading in LINE OF SIGHT is terrible. Unforgivably bad. No other way to put it. Whoever had the job of red-penning this manuscript had an outright indifference or ignorance regarding commas, hyphens and homonyms. Among other things. A sampling of several dozen objective errors I highlighted in the text:
"Frank was on top of me in seconds, pinning me down and reigning blow after blow...."
"I nearly jumped out of my seat when I heard the wrap of someone’s knuckles against my window."
"I waived him off and tried to figure out who I was talking to."
"Whoever was following me wasn’t being terribly discrete about it."
"Collen" (instead of Colleen)
"Alright" (no style guide supports this as a preferred usage over "all right.")
"'I don’t have a problem with protesting Dina,' I said."
"For all her sometimes radical talk, Key could have made money in public relations if she wanted too."
"None of the nonsense that will make my editors heads spin.”
Queally doesn't deserve such shoddy service. My hope is that his publisher fixes the ebook edition right away, and does the same for the print edition should it sell well enough to merit a second printing. Which, on its merits, it does.
July 18, 2020
A reporter is caught in the crossfire when an explosive video goes viral. There's much more going on than meets the eye. Great plot. Solid characters. Wonderful twists. 4.25 stars.
June 3, 2020
I typically avoid issuing poor reviews, but this case is so egregious.
The author’s plot and characters are okay. I made it to the end, though did consider giving up at several points.
The problem is the quality of the product. I note that the author did not thank his editor in the acknowledgement section. Good thing. This is the shoddiest book I have read in quite some time.
Grammatical and stylistic errors abound. Some examples: Consistent confusion of “to” and “too.” Missing commas in dialogue when one character calls another by name. Just one example: “I know you’re not stupid enough to be doing that Russell.” Until going back and re-reading, I thought there might new a new dance called the Russell. Had I been transported back somehow to that old favorite, Eats, Shoots & Leaves? Equally embarrassing was the uber-grating use of “I” as an objective pronoun (e.g., “…the flunkies who’ve found Dina and I…”).
Formatting also proved sloppy. I read the ebook, where chapters often ended and began haphazardly on the same page. The meter at the bottom of the page would sometimes indicate there were 57 pages, for example, remaining in the chapter. This was wildly incorrect. Also, the text would suddenly change to left justified instead of full justified for a few brief paragraphs.
On its website, the publisher, Polis Books, claims it “handles every aspect of a book's publication, from cover design to formatting, editing and copyediting, printing, marketing, distribution and publicity.” Authors under contract there may want to do their own due diligence — which should happen in any case. After all, in the end it is the author’s reputation at stake.
Poor quality like this is simply inexcusable. Publisher and author should be hanging their heads in shame over this one. If there are future works to come, qualified editors and designers are a must.
The author’s plot and characters are okay. I made it to the end, though did consider giving up at several points.
The problem is the quality of the product. I note that the author did not thank his editor in the acknowledgement section. Good thing. This is the shoddiest book I have read in quite some time.
Grammatical and stylistic errors abound. Some examples: Consistent confusion of “to” and “too.” Missing commas in dialogue when one character calls another by name. Just one example: “I know you’re not stupid enough to be doing that Russell.” Until going back and re-reading, I thought there might new a new dance called the Russell. Had I been transported back somehow to that old favorite, Eats, Shoots & Leaves? Equally embarrassing was the uber-grating use of “I” as an objective pronoun (e.g., “…the flunkies who’ve found Dina and I…”).
Formatting also proved sloppy. I read the ebook, where chapters often ended and began haphazardly on the same page. The meter at the bottom of the page would sometimes indicate there were 57 pages, for example, remaining in the chapter. This was wildly incorrect. Also, the text would suddenly change to left justified instead of full justified for a few brief paragraphs.
On its website, the publisher, Polis Books, claims it “handles every aspect of a book's publication, from cover design to formatting, editing and copyediting, printing, marketing, distribution and publicity.” Authors under contract there may want to do their own due diligence — which should happen in any case. After all, in the end it is the author’s reputation at stake.
Poor quality like this is simply inexcusable. Publisher and author should be hanging their heads in shame over this one. If there are future works to come, qualified editors and designers are a must.
May 13, 2020
I thought it was an excellent first novel (4 stars is good for me). Super fun, fast and interesting crime novel penned by an excellent LA Times crime reporter. The characters are really well-developed with complicated relationships and I really enjoyed how he described the intertwining worlds of journalists and police. One quote below:
“But I laughed politely, because that’s how you work sources. It was like an arcade game. Drop a quarter’s worth of dignity into the machine and hope the claw grabs the big prize.”
“But I laughed politely, because that’s how you work sources. It was like an arcade game. Drop a quarter’s worth of dignity into the machine and hope the claw grabs the big prize.”
April 4, 2020
This was one of the best books I’ve read in a while. It brought to mind some of my favorite mystery authors, like Lehane and Connelly.
The book is gritty, complex, and thought provoking. Several times throughout I had to pause and really think about some of the issues raised and my own views of the issues.
The main character, Russell Avery, was flawed yet likeable, and I found myself rooting for him and wanting him to be ok as the book drew to a close. The story follows him as he investigates the death of a young man that is written off as a drug crime, but is actually something much deeper. I won’t go further than that, because the ins and outs of this story are better read without spoilers.
I will say that the end was a surprise to me, but that wasn’t what made the book a 5 Star read. What made this book get all the Stars was the writing and the complexity of the issues, characters and story. I enjoy a book with complex and flawed characters who have many sides.
Overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys gritty crime books like the authors referred to above. It was an engaging read, and thoroughly satisfied my desire for a good mystery.
Thank you to Netgalley and Polis books for the opportunity to review and advanced copy.
The book is gritty, complex, and thought provoking. Several times throughout I had to pause and really think about some of the issues raised and my own views of the issues.
The main character, Russell Avery, was flawed yet likeable, and I found myself rooting for him and wanting him to be ok as the book drew to a close. The story follows him as he investigates the death of a young man that is written off as a drug crime, but is actually something much deeper. I won’t go further than that, because the ins and outs of this story are better read without spoilers.
I will say that the end was a surprise to me, but that wasn’t what made the book a 5 Star read. What made this book get all the Stars was the writing and the complexity of the issues, characters and story. I enjoy a book with complex and flawed characters who have many sides.
Overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys gritty crime books like the authors referred to above. It was an engaging read, and thoroughly satisfied my desire for a good mystery.
Thank you to Netgalley and Polis books for the opportunity to review and advanced copy.
March 8, 2023
Solid street mystery set in Newark, with realistic details about city politics, police-department politics, and the dysfunction of the legal system. Also sharp on the interplay of activism and governmental inertia, with an acute sense of how cities work and mostly don't. Queally is a crime reporter, and it shows. Also some great throwaway lines.
But wow, does this publisher need to educate its proofreaders about basic grammar: they don't know how to punctuate direct address two-thirds of the time ("What are you talking about Dina?"), the difference between rain/reign, anymore/any more, and, most egregiously, to/too. (Seriously? There are double-digit sentences employing phrasing like "who he was talking too.") That distracted me a lot from the plotting and vivid sense of a city where hope fled years ago. Also docking myself half a star for spilling the remnants of my tea on this while I walked to Bi-Rite, forcing me to buy the library a replacement copy I'll bring with me when I return this.
But wow, does this publisher need to educate its proofreaders about basic grammar: they don't know how to punctuate direct address two-thirds of the time ("What are you talking about Dina?"), the difference between rain/reign, anymore/any more, and, most egregiously, to/too. (Seriously? There are double-digit sentences employing phrasing like "who he was talking too.") That distracted me a lot from the plotting and vivid sense of a city where hope fled years ago. Also docking myself half a star for spilling the remnants of my tea on this while I walked to Bi-Rite, forcing me to buy the library a replacement copy I'll bring with me when I return this.
September 2, 2020
In addition to being an interesting, well-paced murder-mystery detective story, this book is damn near prophetic in that it's a really nuanced look at police use of force and Black Lives Matter -- an issue that erupted in prominence just weeks after publication.
Now is a very polarized/polarizing time; it's easy to pick a side and decide your side is right and everyone on the other side is terrible. This book is relentless in rejecting that way of thinking. Yes, corruption and abuse and selfishness do absolutely exist; the book gets right into the muck of that. But the story also prods you into thinking in shades of gray, into seeing people as individuals, and -- especially in the U.S. at this time -- that's a big breath of fresh air.
Now is a very polarized/polarizing time; it's easy to pick a side and decide your side is right and everyone on the other side is terrible. This book is relentless in rejecting that way of thinking. Yes, corruption and abuse and selfishness do absolutely exist; the book gets right into the muck of that. But the story also prods you into thinking in shades of gray, into seeing people as individuals, and -- especially in the U.S. at this time -- that's a big breath of fresh air.
June 23, 2021
First, I'll just say as a black woman, I was nervous for James writing about racial injustice and writing black characters but his career in journalism showed off in this masterpiece of a crime fiction novel. I was PLEASANTLY SURPRISED. I usually only read character studies so I had a feeling I wasn't going to connect with the protagonist but I DID. I watched Russell's journey and it made the book that much more powerful for me.
Russell and James proved to be real allies!
AMAZING BOOK! CANNOT WAIT TO READ THE SEQUEL!!!!
ALL THESE ASHES. coming soon!!! so you def have time to get this book in.
Russell and James proved to be real allies!
AMAZING BOOK! CANNOT WAIT TO READ THE SEQUEL!!!!
ALL THESE ASHES. coming soon!!! so you def have time to get this book in.
May 29, 2021
Reporters are the best writers. Sometimes.
"The wind hit hard as soon as I got out of the car, one of those straight through your body gusts that reminds every muscle it's tired and every brain cell that being outside in November is stupid."
Wonderfully Newark (if ever those two words get used next to each other). Didn't get a "Brick City" reference 'til page 23.
I loved it: I hope we meet Russell Avery again. I enjoyed the characters and the work that built them. Almost made me miss Newark.
"The wind hit hard as soon as I got out of the car, one of those straight through your body gusts that reminds every muscle it's tired and every brain cell that being outside in November is stupid."
Wonderfully Newark (if ever those two words get used next to each other). Didn't get a "Brick City" reference 'til page 23.
I loved it: I hope we meet Russell Avery again. I enjoyed the characters and the work that built them. Almost made me miss Newark.
October 8, 2021
'Line of Sight' accomplishes a real feat. It has a ripped-from-the-headlines quality, but it never feels pedantic or exploitive; at the same time, it also synthesizes the best of a ripping old-school detective yarn and weaves it into a broader exploration of the forces that can potentially tear a city apart. The dialogue is snappy (and often quite funny) and all the characters are finely realized; you might not agree with the protagonist's choices in life, but you understand why he makes them, and you can't ask for better when it comes to crime/neo-noir. Heartily recommended.
November 24, 2021
Police and lawyer thrillers aren't my favorite genre but I became invested in Avery and his pursuit for truth in a case of possible murder and coverup. It took place in Newark, a city I'm not too familiar with, but I felt like I was there as it had a moment of reckoning with police brutality. I'm excited to see what Avery does in the second novel now that some hard truths about his city have been revealed.
December 31, 2020
Given that this was written before the events of 2020, it’s amazing how timely the story is. Queally, having lived in this world, proves that the storm that hit this year has been brewing for some time. Take that societal maelstrom and make it the backdrop of a gritty, authentic crime drama and you’ve got a surefire hit on your hands. Looking forward to what Queally brings next!
April 21, 2021
3.5 stars. Published in 2020. "Line of Sight" is Queally's debut novel. His day job is as the crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In this sense, he has joined a list of former LA Times crime reporters turning their skills to crime fiction - especially, Michael Connelly and Miles Corwin. The setting is contemporary Newark, NJ - not Los Angeles.
January 14, 2022
Terrific book! Gripping tale of life in Newark. The author does a fabulous job of showing how journalists (in this case an ex-journalist) navigates the ethical challenge of investigating the police while relying on them for information. It's a nuanced, fast-paced, and realistic novel with lots of fascinationg characters.
November 13, 2023
3.5 🌟/5 I really, really enjoyed Queally's writing - sharp, Witty and overall just really good. However, I didn't totally connect with the story. I liked Russ but the story just didn't grab me. I do, however, fully intend to read the next book and see where that takes me. Even my favs sometimes write a story I don't love.
March 29, 2020
Really fun read that draws you in from the very beginning. Russell Avery is a relatable protagonist, and the story moves along quickly, keeping you interested throughout. I had to get my mom off the phone so I could finish the last 40pgs (please don’t tell)!
April 23, 2020
The story was fast-paced and interesting. I found myself distracted by how poorly the book was edited. There was a recurring error of a missing comma before someone's name in an address that drove me bonkers. "How are you Russ?" "I don't know, I just am."
November 20, 2022
DNF…I actually really liked this book! I won’t be able to finish it before my book club, but I would definitely return to it at some point since it was fast paced and interesting. The writing was very wry, and Avery is a great character.
December 20, 2022
Queally covers the beat of my day job, so I was very interested to hear him out. Definitely entertaining, but he ends up with an interesting perspective from the journalist but coming off a bit heavy-handed on the journalist tropes.
November 5, 2024
This story could have been much better with actual editing. There is a good plot but I was distracted by grammatical errors, typos, misspellings, and similar things that I expect to be polished in a published novel that’s been printed in hard cover and for which people are expected to pay.
April 13, 2020
Kept me on my toes. It's a page turner.
July 26, 2020
Quick read. Strong characters. Basic good vs evil along with bribes and lies.
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