In Kerrigan's, the local bar, a quiet resentment is building. What had seemed permanent for so long suddenly feels threatened.

Mrs. Dahlgren has lived in the neighborhood since before her kids were born. Her son Red, a plainclothes detective, is at home in the community; his little sister Annie, a brilliant, lovely girl in her senior year of high school, is determined to go to college and succeed in the outside world. But when Annie is found murdered in an alley down the street from her home the morning after her birthday party, Toby Walters, a black teenager whom Annie was secretly dating, is swiftly and unjustly fingered as the murderer. The regulars from Kerrigan's, angered by the unspeakable crime, lead the search to find Toby--but is Toby the killer, or is he the unfortunate victim of a lynch-mob mentality fueled by prejudice and fear of change?

"Cranny provides a striking portrait of Brooklyn in all its glory and squalor." - Publishers Weekly