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Cast the First Stone is the second Jane Adams novel featuring DI Mike Croft, and the book where Adams's particular gift comes into focus. A man recently released from prison after serving time for a horrific crime returns to his hometown, and the town's response (a campaign of harassment, a series of escalating threats) forces Croft to investigate not the original crime but the present-day violence directed at someone who served his sentence.
Adams writes this material with the moral seriousness it requires. The novel is not interested in cheap sympathy for either the victim or the harassers; it is interested in what happens when a community decides that the law's decision is not enough. The investigation is procedural without being procedural in the dry sense.
Four stars. Heavy reading, recommended. The British psychological mystery in its most honest 90s register.
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