May Must-Read: Mission Hill by Pamela Wechsler

Photograph courtesy of Minotaur Books

With her taut debut novel, Mission Hill, Pamela Wechsler’s career comes full circle. After spending decades as a Suffolk, state, and federal prosecutor, she struck out for Hollywood, working as a legal consultant and writer for the various Law and Order shows. She returned to Boston in 2011 to work for the Middlesex DA, and soon enrolled in workshops at Grub Street to hone her novelistic chops. Three years later, she had a three-book deal, thus launching a Boston crime series to join the pantheon of Spenser and Patrick Kenzie.

Mission Hill follows its protagonist—the stylish yet gritty Suffolk prosecutor Abby Endicott, whose career closely mirrors Wechsler’s own—through Beacon Hill social clubs and Mattapan drug dens. “What I really tried to capture was the emotional impact of what goes on behind the scenes,” Wechsler says. “The turmoil, the self-doubt. Except for detectives, as a prosecutor, you really see things and experience things that nobody else does.”

Out May 3, Minotaur Books, $25.

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