The Middle of Nowhere

In Bob Sloan's interesting but ultimately unsatisfying third series entry, The Middle of Nowhere: A Lenny Bliss Mystery (after 1999's Bliss Jumps the Gun), the veteran NYPD homicide detective finds juggling his job and family life increasingly challenging after two bodies surface: one in the East River, which may be linked with a slumlord's gentrification schemes, the other in an affluent and influential family's Upper East Side apartment. Sloan succeeds at crafting finely etched portraits of the many people whose lives are touched by the crimes, but the various affecting vignettes don't make for a coherent whole, leaving the reader with a taste of a promising talent not fully realized.