LOVE AND DEATH IN BROOKLYN

A former cop probes the shooting death of a charismatic city councilman.

At the Brooklyn restaurant Maiba, the festive 60th-birthday party of African-American theater professor Noah Plainter is disrupted when a hail of bullets from an unknown source kills Noah’s son Ronan, a rising political star. Though Noah’s protégé Blades Overstreet feels duty-bound to find the killer, his decision doesn’t sit well with his wife Anais, a tempestuous actress. A few years ago, Blades angrily left the NYPD and filed suit against them (Too Beautiful to Die, 2003, etc.). Now that his case has been favorably settled and he has a music store and nightclub to attend to, Anais and his daughter Chesney, the fruit of a nine-year affair, want him far from danger. But volatile Blades is a guy who attracts trouble. River Paris, the club’s sexy, streetwise manager, gets into a wild shootout, and Blades is hounded by FBI Special Agent Stephanie Kraw. His drug-addict brother arrives to stir up discord, and Anais bristles with jealousy at her husband’s relationship with River, et al. When a lizard-faced hitman threatens Blades and his family, he kicks it up a notch to a take-no-prisoners pursuit. The crowded cast also includes strapping transvestite Toni Monday and politico Baron Spencer, a former Black Panther.

Over-the-top prose plus overheated plot plus oversexed characters equals one guilty pleasure.