This is a very good book.

Good book.

A journalist gets involved with a cop trying to unravel his sisters murder. His sister was mistakenly hit in a gang murder, but nothing is as it appears when turf wars and gang wars are entanbled with the fight for personal survival.

Lays a a lot of groundwork for other Alcorn works. From the perspective of being thought provoking spiritualy and socially this is a phenominal book.

For casual reading this book is a little hard to get through. Not difficult reading, just lots of overlapping plot lines.

Alcorn is a great author. I read the second book in this series first, and thought it was better than this one.

Good viewpoint on living under racism. Not my favorite writing.

Excellent book. Sometimes difficult to read as there is a lot of unresolved anger, bitterness, and guilt in the main character, Clarence Abernathy. Tragedy strikes and Clarence has to work through all of his unresolved emotions to emerge through the other side as the man God intended him to be.

When his sister and niece are murdered in what appears to be a senseless drive-by shooting, Portland journalist Clarence Abernathy is forced into an evaluation of his racial identity. His planned move into a swankier neighborhood is derailed and he moves his family into his deceased sister's home in a poor section of Portland. He meets Ollie, the white detective who is handling his sister's case. Over the course of the book, he holds discussions with Ollie and with Jake, another white friend, and gains new insights into race relations (as do Ollie and Jake). The investigation points to a well-heeled politician, and to the fact that Clarence's sister's murder was a hit gone awry. They hit the wrong house. The plot is well-developed and comes to a satisfying conclusion, and the race discussions, while a bit preachy come off well because they are presented as conversations. The only off-key note is the presentation of the sister's presence in Randy Alcorn's vision of Heaven. I don't think these contribute much to the story. It is well intended, to offer hope to us Earth-Bound Christians, but it doesn't fit in the story.

This book treats the topic of racism from all angles. Randy Alcorn does a great job portraying the African American life - one can almost think he's black!

I love the portrayal of our fellowship with other believers breaking down the lines of racial division that often separate humanity. It's really good that Clarence gets to speak freely with Jake about racial issues - that they act like true brothers.

Such a deep and insightful read.

I'm not a huge fiction fan but I love this series! The interweaving scenes of Heaven made me lovingly think of my mom, and brought joyful tears of hope of heaven that is real and active.

Wow! Excellent book! A crime, heaven and Christian story all rolled into one. This story gives a glimpse into what passing into a heaven might be like. Again it was written in the 90's so it is interesting to see how the crime and gangs in the inner cities were depleted and predicted to be in the future.

I read this as a very young adult and enjoyed it when I read it. The story telling is gripping. While I don't know that I can go all the way with the theology, I will say that Alcorn's thoughts on heaven are very intriguing.

Second in a series of three books by Randy Alcorn, "Deadline" and "Deception" being the other two, I highly recommend reading all three. Randy is a writer of Christian literature, but for those of you who may be turned off by the label "Christian literature", this series of three books will entertain you as suspenseful thrillers on their own merit. The Christian aspect is present, but subtle, and will not interfere with your enjoyment of three good thrillers. Randy does not write his fiction with an "in your face" presentation of his Christianity, but simply incorporates it as a real-life component in the lives of many people, several of whom happen to play a role in these books. Brought together by tragic circumstances, the two main characters are a police detective and a newspaper columnist. At first they circle each other like a pair of dogs trying to determine which should be the dominant one, but that soon evolves into a strong friendship by which they are able to deal with some major crises. Murder, gang violence, drugs, drive-by shootings, etc, are the real focuses (foci?) of these three companion volumes, and those issues are well researched and well presented by Randy Alcorn. I strongly recommend all three books to fans of detective thrillers, as well as people who enjoy Christian fiction.

Though I have different theological ideas than the author and different political ideas than his main character, I really liked this book. It makes me look at life from varying perspectives as the characters solve a murder mystery.

I really wanted to like this book. I am a Christian and I really liked the other books Randy wrote, "Deadline" was great, "Safely home" was very moving, but I had to stop reading this book. I am not offended or surprised by the heaven scenes as the consideration for afterlife is what Randy's ministry is all about. As a Christian I welcomed them and appreciated the reminder to think about what I believe.

However, they did appear much more frequently than they did in the other two books I mentioned and eventually detracted from the story. I plowed along until I was at 38% on my Kindle then I looked it up again on Amazon and realized it is 600+ pages! No wonder it feels long! If it is shorter book I'd be done already! There is nothing wrong with discuss Christian ideas in the fiction format, like Randy's hero, C.S. Lewis has done so successfully. However this IS fiction after all and at such it needs to honor the format and the genre, however with the all too often interruption of yet another long last family member and their all too similar stories in Heaven, character development for Clarence and plot development is rendered unimportant. And the end result is a 600+ page story that could have been told in half that length.

I just can't read anymore and skipped to the end for the murder mystery part of it, it wasn't very far off from what I guessed about 10% into the book.