The Sugar House — Laura Lippman

Baltimore locals recognize the Sugar House as a stubborn and defiant legacy of the city's past. Tess Monaghan thought she knew it too -- until she was forced to take on the most disturbing case of her accidental career.

A client named Ruthie -- who seems to know Tess's father a little too well -- asks the newspaperwoman-turned-p.i. to investigate a year-old "Jane Doe" murder and its grim aftermath. Ruthie's low-life brother, Henry, confessed to killing a teenager runaway over a bottle of glue -- and, a month into his prison term, he met the same fate as his victim. Following a precious few tantalizing clues, Tess sets off on a path that is leading her from Baltimore's exclusive Inner Harbor to the city's seediest neighborhoods. But it's the shocking discovery of the runaway's true identity that turns her hunt deadly. Suddenly a supposedly solved murder case is turning up newer, fresher corpses and newer, scarier versions of the Sugar House -- places that look sweet and safe...but only from the outside.