Dead Red

O’Mara’s intricately plotted third outing for New York City-cop-turned-Brooklyn-teacher Ray Donne (after 2013’s Crooked Numbers) opens with a bang. Ray and his old friend Ricky Torres, a former cop and ex-Marine who served in Iraq, are sitting in the front seat of Ricky’s cab when it’s riddled with bullets, killing Ricky and injuring Ray. Ricky had been working for Jack Knight, another ex-cop who now runs a PI agency, to locate Angela, the missing 16-year-old daughter of a public-relations mogul. To find out who targeted Ricky, Ray agrees to assist on the case, despite his long, acrimonious history with Jack. Ray’s girlfriend, newspaper reporter Allison Rogers, and his uncle, NYPD chief of detectives Raymond Donne, lend support. O’Mara captures the world of New York politics and convincingly takes Ray into the mind-set of young veterans newly returned from war. Energetic storytelling and credible characters are a plus. [em]Agents: Erin Niumata and Maura Teitelbaum, Folio Literary Management. (Jan.) [/em]