Winter 2003. Still reeling from 9/11, New York City is hit by the worst blizzard in years. On the verge of making peace with his own turbulent life, Artie Cohen-Reggie Nadelson's Russian-born, angst-ridden detective-is called to investigate a pile of blood-soaked children's clothes found on a Brooklyn beach. Artie is reluctantly drawn into a case that involves the death of one child, the strange disappearance of another, and growing anxiety about the fate of his own godson- all against the backdrop of a city already on edge. In his increasingly obsessive search for the missing child, Artie veers from posh parties on the Lower West Side of Manhattan to the remote coastal suburbs of Brooklyn, among the Russian community he thought he had left behind, only to discover truths that will haunt him in more ways than one.

Like Sara Paretsky in Chicago and George Pelecanos in Washington, D.C., Nadelson-a native New Yorker-captures the character of New York City and its outer boroughs. Disturbed Earth is both a riveting thriller and an insightful portrait of a post-9/11 New York.