Grift, greed, corruption, and jazz swirl together in this reimagining of New York City’s Roaring ’20s.

In this second installment of Nuckel’s Volunteers series, characters with origin stories linking to several key international events—World War I, the Easter Rebellion, the rise of the labor movement—hustle to define their legacies. The historical novel primarily follows Owney Madden, the owner of the legendary Cotton Club in West Harlem. Besides curating a music program and managing a speak-easy, Madden is looking for ways to move up in the underworld. Unbeknown to him, some shadowy robber barons have other plans. They enlist Charles Merritt—war hero and veteran of the Harlem Hellfighters—to enact their designs for rooting out local corruption. Their schemes to consolidate influence are aided by an infamous Irish rebel but complicated by labor union power and local gangsters. The way the artfully crafted novel builds tension by mashing together disparate backroom dealings is one of its strengths. But eventually, each added layer makes the tale a little more far-fetched. At least Merritt acknowledges his wildly ambitious undertaking (“Mr. Jack Morgan and Mr. John Rockefeller are going to listen to my suggestions about fighting corruption at the highest level of city government? I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan, but I find that hard to believe”) and thus invites readers along for the thrilling ride. Madden’s authority is usurped in favor of an arrangement between Merritt, the robber barons, and Belle Turner, a dancer deemed “the Belle of Broadway.” It does not take long for the deal to sour. From there, the energetic plot thickens as Madden murderously seeks to reassert himself.

A well-written historical thriller filled with smoky backrooms, crime, sex, and iconic music.

A New York–based thriller that connects the worlds of counterterrorism and high finance.

The ambient mood Nuckel (Grit, 2013, etc.) creates in his novel is dark, even grim: a world of elite treachery, lies and organized violence. The narrative begins in the early 1970s with William Brogan, once a top official with the Justice Department, who now owns a major security firm. He’s also an assassin who targets terrorists, although it’s never quite clear whom he works for or how he came upon that role. After he successfully completes his latest assignment, he’s approached by the informant he worked with on his last three assassinations: Carter Handley, a wealthy businessman with deep ties to the Middle East. It turns out that Handley tricked Brogan into killing the CFO of a well-known financial services firm in order to further his own self-interest. As a way to secure Brogan’s silence, Handley established a blind trust that made it appear that Brogan had been buying up stock in the firm for months, giving him an apparent motive for the murder. The remainder of the novel takes place more than 40 years later, after Brogan has died, and the executor of his estate, Sol Landsman, stumbles upon the mysterious blind trust, which perplexes and concerns him. He then hires Ben Hirsch, a former investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission, to trace the trust back to its origins. This briskly paced story has no shortage of action or intrigue, and the suspense simmers slowly and steadily to a final boil. Its third-person narration can be coarse and unsubtle at times: “Ben stood stunned. Jesus Christ, he thought, Kat Wells had him pissing in his pants. The police commissioner of New York City was apologizing to him. Un-fucking-believable.” However, the author does show real skill in describing a world that’s equally corrupt and plausible.

A good choice for readers interested in an action-packed plot without literary pretensions.

A deranged killer comes to New York seeking vengeance in Nuckel’s (The Vig, 2011, etc.) latest thriller.

After mob assassin Carla Pugliese easily dispatches men hired to kill her, she decides to target her mobster uncle, who manipulated her into becoming an assassin by exploiting her father’s sexual abuse, and Frank McGinley, a former target whom she believes tried to have her killed. Meanwhile, Frank, a recovering alcoholic, starts a job helping to stop Wall Street crime, unaware of the crazed woman meticulously planning his demise. The author’s taut novel toys with readers’ expectations almost immediately; it opens with Carla as the victim, but as Frank struggles to stay sober and rekindles an old romance, he gradually becomes the story’s protagonist. Carla, however, evolves into a chilling figure as her motivations change from retribution to self-preservation and, ultimately, to pure savagery. In the deftly handled narrative, Carla and Frank are separated for months before finally catching up with each other. Nuckel also discerningly uses the narrative’s 2002 setting, depicting characters who have feelings of guilt about the then-recent 9/11 tragedy. Frank’s first assignment at his new job is to retrieve funds from a man who refuses to pay, and the resulting frank talk about Wall Street trading is neither rife with jargon nor excessively dumbed down; instead, it’s expressed in layman’s terms for intelligent readers. Although not every minor character makes it to the end, any one of them, including Kat, a Colorado cop who tracks Carla to New York, or Brogan, Frank’s sometimes-scary boss, would be welcomed in a sequel.

A slow-burning story with a fiery climax that more than lives up to expectations.

In this debut thriller, a New York options trader finds himself in even a greater mess than the financial market.

Nuckel, who was a floor trader at the American Stock Exchange of the 1990s, brings an insider’s intimacy to this tale of seriously nasty doings in a market clearing company. The story features Frank McGinley, a 38-year-old—and getting older every minute—options trader who is on a slick downward spiral that will end in his very own delisting. The aftershocks of 9/11, drink, his antiquated status as a trader and his general revulsion at the financial-market life finds him at the end of his tether when a little hush money comes his way. Despite Nuckel’s open, direct prose—which lends itself to a nicely spooky, metronomic portentousness—it’s not wholly clear whether or not Frank might be willing to cash the check, but it doesn’t matter. Before he has a chance to bank it, he gets swept up in a Justice Department/Securities Exchange Commission sting—Nuckel is good with detailing the mechanics of skimming, not to mention pungent when it comes to overdrinking: “He felt himself sinking…The falling feeling was his companion”—that finds him on the wrong side of Harrison Heywood, a vicious hustler and ringleader of the scam. Harrison, in turn, introduces Carla Pugliese, an assassin who has been buzzing various troublemakers involved with the scam, into the story. Carla is both damaged goods and superwoman, and too diaphanous a character for her earthy presence, but serves to highlight the richness of character Nuckel has given Frank and Brogan, a natty Fed. The overall story has a good tempo, keeping events pleasingly off balance, but it’s the conclusion, which is spread over dozens of pages, that shines brightest, with snappy twists and credible surprises. A taut thriller that cruises through the New York financial market, with all its blind curves and bumpy roadways, like a sports car.