An engrossing and well-crafted riff on the tough-guy PI novel.
In Cohen’s debut detective novel, a down-on-his-luck private investigator takes on his former in-laws.
It’s 1952 in Cleveland, and Benjamin Gold has had a rough decade. Once a talented attorney, he was traumatized by his service in World War II and a subsequent stay in a psychiatric ward. Afterward, his law firm let him go, and then his wife left him. Forced to work as a private investigator, he spends much of his time at the bottom of a bottle. Then, one day, a beautiful woman walks into his office: Judith Sorin, the daughter of the legendary lawyer to the downtrodden Maury Sorin. Maury was recently shot dead in what was ruled a routine robbery, but Judith suspects that it was actually an assassination. What’s more, she thinks that the wealthy Forsythe family—Gold’s ex-in-laws—ordered the hit. To get to the bottom of what happened, Gold will have to dig up more information on a Forsythe-related case that Maury was working on. Gold jumps at the chance to get back at the family that shunned him because of his Jewish heritage, but to do so, he’ll have to wade through a shady underworld in which industry, politics, the law, and the street intertwine. Can Gold keep it together and solve the case? Cohen’s curt, rapid prose, as narrated by Gold, fits squarely within the hard-boiled tradition. For example, at one point, Gold wonders why the powerful family hasn’t yet tried to “bump [him] off”: “Then again, there could’ve been a gunman waiting for me that very moment outside the building. The thought got the sweat glands pumping.” The distinct midcentury Cleveland setting and Gold’s memories of liberating the Ebensee concentration camp give the novel a memorable sense of gravity throughout. The plot remains true to private-eye genre tropes, but Cohen introduces enough surprises and human touches to keep the reader invested in how it all ends up.
An engrossing and well-crafted riff on the tough-guy PI novel.Pub Date: March 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-948403-50-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kasva Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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