Magic City Deja Vu

On December 4th, 2017 the body of a young girl is discovered floating in Eastlake Park in Birmingham, Alabama.  Lt. Fay Findlay, head of the Special Crimes Unit of the Birmingham Police Department, encounters a case from the history books when she realizes the evidence is strikingly similar to an infamous murder from the same date and place that occurred in 1888.

The City of Birmingham was just seventeen years old when the Hawes murders brought the young industrial city into the national headlines.  That crime gripped the city and the nation for months and brought about what is described as Birmingham’s darkest day. 

Now, one hundred and twenty-nine years later, the crime is once again in the news as the Special Crimes Unit investigates the current case that is hauntingly similar and seems to be intrinsically intertwined to the one from more than a century ago.  We follow Findlay and the SCU team as they investigate the crime and learn how each detective’s own history contributes to the unit’s success as one of the best in the nation as they try to unravel the mystery through an historic tour of the Magic City’s past and present. 

The author parallels the two crimes and investigations giving the reader a perspective of the detective’s personal and professional lives, which ultimately impacts the investigation with twist.