Field of Blood

The murder of three-year-old Brian Wilcox is the saddest story to hit the newspaper in years. Even Paddy Meehan, the new copygirl at the Scottish Daily News, feels the tremors it sends through the jaded newsroom. It's the kind of once-in-a-generation crime that changes a city's landscape-the kind that can make or break a journalist's career.

And Paddy could use a break: her battle for stature in the men's club of the newsroom is going nowhere. So when she discovers a personal connection to one of the young boys implicated in the killing, her job prospects look bright-but at the cost of her family's trust. Loyalty and ambition are at war only briefly, until the secret explodes into public view in the worst possible way. Under siege in the newspaper office and in her own home, Paddy realizes that the only way to make amends is to clear the boy's name, when he's been all but convicted by her colleagues in the media. On her own, and then with the help of a charmingly disheveled young beat reporter, Paddy begins an investigation that reveals secret allegiances and lines of deception that go deep into the past-and that could spell even more horrible crimes in the future if Paddy doesn't get it right.