Tess Monaghan, who has just struck out on her own as a private investigator, gets her first two clients: a man convicted of murder who claims to be looking for the other kids who witnessed his crime and a woman looking for the daughter she put up for adoption years earlier.  When her leads on the first case start ending up murdered, she starts to doubt the intentions of her client.  Meanwhile, she finds that she has a surprising connection to the young girl she has been charged with locating.

Butchers Hill, the third entry in Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series, finally addresses one of the biggest issues facing its setting of Baltimore: race.  Tess is forced to face some of her privilege as she takes on black clients who, while they share the same city, live in a different world.  Lippman does a good job of dealing with the issue, especially considering this book was originally published in 1998.  I certainly don’t remember much in the way of discussion about white privilege at the time.  I’m now a quarter of the way through the series, which I’m sure I’ll pick up again later this year.