CSI: NY- Four Walls by Keith R. A. DeCandido

The CSIs are called out to two very different homicides- one at a medium security prison on Staten Island, where a fight broke out after a baseball game between a set of racist inmates, and a set of black and/or Muslim inmates. But the homicide didn't happen during the game, it happened the next day in the exercise yard when one of the bigots shivved one of the Muslim inmates. But totally unexpected is the second body, the leader of the Muslim inmates- a former cop turned out of the Police for alcoholism that interfered with his job.

Outside, he'd gone Muslim and seemed to be on the verge of turning his life around, turning counselor to troubled kids, when one of those kids died and he went on a bender which ended in an act of vehicular homicide and DWI and lots of jail time. Now, he's dead, but aside from a small abrasion on his head, he doesn't seem to have any wounds on his body. It's as if he just died on the spot for no particular reason. But why?

And Stella and Lindsay are called out to the murder of a young woman named Anna, who worked in an Italian bakery. Left to clean up the night before at close, she's found dead in the morning. As the patrons of the bakery and coffee shop, as well as the employees, react in shock and horror at the death of a bright, lovely girl who everyone loved, it's up to Stella and Lindsay to find the killer from among the girl's many admirers.

At the same time, Don Flack, who is still recovering from the bomb blast that nearly took his life almost a year before, is still in pain and fighting off what he sees as the softening effect of his painkillers. He's been so concerned with being macho that a year later, he's still on his first bottle of pills. But now there's one left, and he's debating with himself- despite being in pretty excruciating pain, over how weak it will make him (metaphorically speaking) if he gives into the pain and takes it. But can he forgive himself if him being in pain puts someone else in danger?

The CSI:NY cast is one I really love. I have all the episodes of the show currently released on DVD (all four seasons, as of right now), and Keith R. A. DeCandido gets every one of the characters exactly right. including my favorite, Cop Don Flack. Reading this book is like watching an episode that was made but never aired- it feels and reads just right. All of the characters are in character, and the deaths and their reasons and explanations are both human and twisted.

Now I wish I could say there were some flaws in this book to complain about, but in truth, I didn't see any. I thoroughly enjoyed myself reading this book and would easily have read many more books by this writer. What's really best about this book is to go beyond the surface that we see in the television series, and truly get into the heads of the characters, and learn, or perhaps remember, little bits about them that we may have forgotten. Like Coroner Sid Hammerback- who was a master chef before becoming a coroner.

I really liked this book, and would definitely recommend it to all the fans of the CSI:NY show and those who enjoy police procedural and Crime Scene Investigation-type novels. It's a fast read and really wonderful. Highly recommended.