THE BIG TILT

A blackmail case spirals out of control and poisons a private investigator’s friendships in this second novel in Flanigan’s Peter O’Keefe series, following Mink Eyes(2019).

This story takes place in “a spot of rough country that urban development had bypassed, the expanding city metaphorically closing its eyes and holding its nose.” Its main characters—O’Keefe, a rough-around-the-edges private investigator with a conscience; and O’Keefe’s operatives, the mysterious Sara Slade and the womanizing ex-cop George Novak—seem to have emerged straight from the pages of classic pulp novels. Unlike the straightforward pulp formula, however, Flanigan interweaves multiple plotlines, a strategy that may leave readers wondering why major characters frequently fall by the wayside. In the first chapter, Carmine Jagoda, a Mafia don on his deathbed, charges Robert Sciorra and Paul Marcone with the task of murdering O’Keefe for damaging their criminal enterprise. Instead of building on this opening premise, however, the following chapters focus on a blackmail case. Mike Harrigan, O’Keefe’s lawyer and childhood friend, hires him to help determine the legitimacy of claims made by Beverly Bronson, another troubled friend—namely, that untrustworthy entrepreneur Jerry Jensen is the father of her adult son and murdered a woman long ago. As O’Keefe works this case, the mob-related plot simply devolves into a rivalry between Sciorra and Marcone. As a result, the mobsters unexpectedly become the least dangerous people in the novel, as O’Keefe learns when Harrigan comes under federal investigation and a car bomb nearly kills him. The author’s offbeat narrative focus doesn’t doom the work, however. Indeed, Flanigan manages to conjure deft, hard-boiled, but literary prose that’s reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s best work.

A gritty and eloquent crime novel.