*Starred Review* Terry Rand has been working out west, trying to forget a troubled past. He comes home to Long Island, though, at the request of his big brother, Collie, who's running out of time on death row. The Rands have been thieves for generations but don't carry guns, which made Collie's killing spree all the more baffling. Collie admits to seven murders but tells Terry someone else did the eighth and begs him to find the culprit. The remarkable originality of this book becomes apparent the moment the reader realizes the Rands are all named after dogs, from Terry (terrier) and Collie to uncles Mal (malamute) and Grey (greyhound). And the family house, its hidden rooms and compartments filled with unfenced junk from previous scores, adds a sense of gothic dysfunction to the tale. As Terry chases Collie's ghosts, he wrestles with his own failings, his family's past, and his fears for what he might become. There are minor flaws in the plotting and pacing, but readers who respond to characters, voice, and atmosphere won't care a bit: Piccirilli has created a world so real you can smell the mildew. After writing crime and horror for presses well known and obscure, he deserves a breakout novel, and this just might be it.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2010 Booklist

At the start of this sharp slice of contemporary noir from Thriller Award-winner Piccirilli (You'd Better Watch Out), retired second-story-man Terrier Rand, who's been trying to put his family's work as professional thieves behind him while ranching out west, has returned east to see his older brother, Collie. Collie is about to be executed for the cold-blooded murder of eight people five years before, though he claims one of those kills wasn't his. When Terrier starts digging through the evidence, he finds inconsistencies that suggest a serial killer may have been using Collie's killing spree to cover up his own. Piccirilli's mastery of the hard-boiled idiom is pitch perfect, particularly in the repartee between his characters, while the picture he paints of the criminal corruption conjoining the innocent and guilty in a small Long Island community is as persuasive as it is seamy. Readers who like a bleak streak in their crime fiction will enjoy this well-wrought novel. Agent: David Hale Smith, DHS Literary. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.