You Can Die Trying — Gar Anthony Haywood

Eight months after racist cop Jack McGovern guns down 12-year-old liquor-store thief Lendell Washington and insists--despite the evidence--that the kid fired on him first, McGovern's remorseful suicide flushes out Mitchell Flowers, a cowed, guilty witness who corroborates McGovern's unlikely story and hires L.A. shamus Aaron Gunner to prove it. McGovern's LAPD colleagues--including Danny Kubo, an IAD investigator who owes him big--weren't crazy about McGovern, and don't welcome Gunner's attempts to exonerate him; and the Washington family-- including Lendell's cousin Noah Ford, now doing time for the robbery- -are convinced he's a cop trying to torpedo their pending lawsuit. Only Deanna Lugo, the partner McGovern was breaking in when he responded to the scene, helps Gunner, in bed and out, untangle a nifty web of treachery and coverups to lay the case to rest for good.