Stephen Tannenbaum

Complications Stephen Tannenbaum

Once again gunfire shatters the tranquility of Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, not a synagogue this time but an attempted mugging on one of its most serenely affluent streets. The perpetrator, now dead, was a young African-American male; the shooter is Tom Murdoch, a former City policeman, now an off duty Allegheny County Detective and the younger brother of the County's District Attorney. The shooting is just one of a number of calamities that pile up into an unbearable heap for Tom and lead him to re-assess his relationships with the people he loves and to ponder his relationship with God.

And on top of everything else that happens to Tom, there is Callahan.