Black is back. Willie Black was last seen, in Oregon Hill, risking the final tattered remnants of his checkered careeer - and his life - to free a man almost everyone else believed was guilty. Willie's still covering the night police beat with its DDGBs and dirt naps, still avoiding the hawk that periodically swopps down to pluck away a few more of his colleagues in a floundering business. He still drinks too much, smokes too much. The only thing that keeps him employed: He's a damn fine reporter. Even his beleaguered bosses would concede that.Willie finds himself neck-deep in a part of Richmond that a boy growing up in Oregon Hill could only experience through illicit midnight stories at the city's most exclusive swimming hole. The Quarry was where Alicia Parker Simpson identified Richard Slade as her rapist, 28 years ago.
