Fast Falls the Night: A Novel - 6 (First Edition.)

"The first drug overdose comes just after midnight, when a young woman dies on the dirty floor of a gas station bathroom.

To the people of the small town of Acker's Gap, West Virginia, it is just another tragedy.

It is sad--but these days, depressingly familiar. But then there is another overdose. And another. And another. Prosecutor Bell Elkins soon realizes that her Appalachian hometown is facing its starkest challenge yet: a day of constant heroin overdoses from a batch tainted with a lethal tranquilizer.

While the clock ticks and the bodies fall, Bell and her colleagues desperately track the source of the deadly drug--and engage in fierce debates over the wisdom of expending precious resources to save the lives of self-destructive addicts.

Based on a real-life event, Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller's latest Bell Elkins novel "Fast Falls the Night" takes place in a single 24-hour period, unfurling against the backdrop of a shatter