THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK

Lydia Chin and Bill Smith hit the big time, in good ways and bad, when they’re hired by New York City’s mayor—at least, the official one.

Nobody knows that Mayor Carole McCann’s 15-year-old son has run away from home again, and that’s how she’d like to keep it. Since she's in the middle of negotiating with the police department over its new contract, she thinks it would show both nepotism and weakness to ask the cops to look for Mark, so she gets her aide, Aubrey Hamilton, to approach Bill, who was once Aubrey’s boyfriend. Lydia, who’s been asked to look into the suicide of Macauley Prep student Amber Shun, turns down that case so she can come along for the ride. And quite a ride it is. Before it’s over, Bill and Lydia will have survived a brawl with costumed superheroes in Times Square; questioned several other unofficial mayors of New York’s neighborhoods and ethnic groups who demand better subway service, improved park lighting, and more immigration attorneys for their constituents in return for their assistance; seriously antagonized the duly elected mayor of New York; traced the motive for Mark McCann’s disappearance to a particularly insidious trafficking ring; and inevitably linked it to the death of Amber Shun. As usual, Rozan is less interested in hiding the culprits than in providing a consistently brisk and illuminating tour of the city, gently probing the underside of any number of rocks, and supplying a triple-barreled climax that will answer all your questions and then some.

Professional-grade work from two of the best private eyes on the scene.