In Howard Owen’s Evergreen, a Willie Black mystery, the many-times-married journalist is back in what just may be the best book of this always excellent series. It is also the most somber. The book opens in Richmond, Virginia, on New Years Day, and Willie’s newsroom is eagerly awaiting “the first stiff of the year.” Will it be murder? Suicide? Or just a dull old heart attack? Willie is called away from this morbid pastime to attend yet another death watch, this one at the bedside of Philomena Slade, a distant cousin. Philomena has one last request for Willie: that he take over the job she’d been doing for years—keeping Artie Lee’s grave tidy. Willie isn’t thrilled with the task since Artie Lee was his hapless father, a talented but irresponsible jazz musician who deserted his young family when Willie was only 15 months old, then died in a drunken car accident. Faithful to Philomena’s dying wish, Willie begins cutting away the weeds from Artie Lee’s grave in the neglected Evergreen Cemetery. But a newsman is always a newsman, and despite Willie’s lifelong resentment toward his father, he grows curious about that accident. As he roams Richmond, talking to people who had known Artie Lee, he realizes something’s not quite right. The accident may not have been an accident at all—quite possibly a murder. The eight Willie Black mysteries have always been known for their sly humor, and there’s plenty of it here, but it’s the returning characters themselves that steal the show. Peggy, Willie’s mother (and Artie Lee’s former baby mama), is a pot-smoking hoot of a woman now living with a man called Awesome Dude. As loquacious as Peggy is, the one subject she has always refused to talk about is Artie Lee. Also on tap are a bevy of half-crazed reporters and editors, who, because of declining newspaper subscriptions, expect their professional lives to end at any moment. We also meet Archangel Bright, a wise old man who at one time knew Artie Lee, but like anyone else who once knew the long-dead jazzman, he’s not talking. In the earlier Willie Black mysteries (beginning with Scuffletown) the action is centered on Willie’s many demons—women, gambling, liquor, etc.—but now he has to put his own demons on hold in order to investigate his father’s. In the end, the ghost of Willie’s long-dead, long-reviled father teaches him that apples never fall far from the tree—and sometimes, that’s a good thing.