Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lehane (Murder at the College Library) delivers a gratifying old-school PI novel set in the thick of the McCarthy era. WWII veteran Mick Mulligan had it all--a successful career as a Hollywood cartoonist, a comfortable salary, a lovely family--until he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After losing his job and his wife, Mick fled to New York City and reinvented himself as a private investigator. His latest case lands him in a simmering cauldron of social unrest that could boil over at any moment. A year ago, Black cabbie and Communist Party member Harold Williams was convicted of murdering wealthy white taxi company owner Irwin Johnson. Harold is scheduled to be executed in just two weeks, but labor leader Duke Rogowski hires Mick to look into the case with hopes that he might exonerate Williams. A skeptical Mick digs in, soon discovering that the list of Harold's enemies is long, and coming around to the idea that the cabbie may, in fact, be a patsy. Lehane's pacing and hardboiled dialogue are hard to beat, and he makes the jittery paranoia of the period jump off the page. Fans of James Ellroy will get a kick out of this. Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
The year is 1950, and the Cold War has turned inward as U.S. Congressional committees search for Communists in government, Hollywood, and the workforce. Animator Mick Mulligan is one victim of the Red Scare, having lost his job due to associations with "fellow travelers." Now he lives in New York City and makes ends meet as a private investigator. His latest case puts him right back in the soup, as it involves Communists, organized crime, and labor unrest, all of which tie in to the murder of a member of the taxi and limo drivers' union. Mick has been asked to reinvestigate this murder as the man who was convicted for it sits on death row. As he attempts to right a grievous injustice, Mick will work day and night, dodging fists, bullets, and femmes fatales. VERDICT On par with the works of Kate Quinn and James Ellroy, the latest historical murder mystery from Lehane, author of the "Bartender Brian McNulty" books, is not to be missed. It showcases a postwar United States where paranoia, cynicism, and polarizing division are alive and well, yet there is a lasting hope in the prospect of justice.--Philip Zozzaro
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Leaving behind the quiet yet murderous settings ofMurder at the College Library (2024) and its predecessors, Lehane's most impassioned and ambitious novel plunges into the anti-communist frenzy of 1950. Mick Mulligan was fired from his job as a Disney animator when he refused to name names to the FBI. Now that his wife has left him and taken their toddler daughter, he's hung out his shingle as a private eye. When Duke Rogowski, president of the United Taxi and Limousine Drivers, asks Mick to reopen the case of Harold Williams, a Black communist on death row for shooting his boss, cab company owner Irwin Johnson, Mick's intrigued by the call. But he has questions of his own. What possible leads can there be that the police haven't already investigated? Why did Duke wait a year after Williams' conviction to make this move, only two weeks before his scheduled execution? And how can Mick tack between the wishes of Duke's two vice presidents, self-identified communist Sol Rosen, who's eager to see Williams exonerated, and mob boss Vincent Forlini, who's firmly opposed to troubling the waters? The more deeply involved Mick gets with the richly detailed cast of interested parties--rabid anti-communists, communists and socialist organizers of every stripe, FBI informers, and three beautiful women: Duke's wife, Cynthia; Johnson's widow, Eva; and Elena DeMarco, the sister of Williams' co-worker and friend--the more he realizes that the conflicts that led to Johnson's murder are a lot more complicated than J. Edgar Hoover evidently assumes. Consistently more powerful in its exploration of the Red Scare than in its invocation of contemporaneous noir tropes. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
