Bit of a palate cleanser before returning to my current "Dark" theme, first paragraph:
"Last night I'd felt a chill in the air, but today would be another hot one. I'd opened all the windows, and a little fan was humming away on the desk. The stink of sweat mingled with the smell of food from the bowling alley in the basement. The odour of hamburgers and chips came wafting up to my office on the fourth floor. I thought I'd read in the paper that the place had gone bust last winter, but now the smell of fast food was spreading through the building."
One June night, in a small town gripped by a sweltering heat wave, a young man is forced off the road and into the river. Robert Bell, a disillusioned local journalist with a dry sense of humour and an escalating drink problem, leaves behind the banality of his quiet office to investigate the mysterious death. Simmering racial tensions in the town threaten to boil over and local Serbian immigrants become the easy targets for blame.