Jack Leightner juggles two Brooklyn cases in Cohen’s so-so third novel to feature the NYPD detective (after 2007’s The Graving Dock
): the staged suicides of two women and the murder of Russian Daniel Lelo, with whom Leightner shared a hospital room years earlier after both men were shot. Leightner, whose previous relationships include an ex-wife and a girlfriend who revealed she was seeing someone else just as he was about to propose marriage, finds himself falling for Lelo’s attractive widow, Zhenya. His refusal to consider Zhenya a serious suspect damages the book’s credibility, as do a number of other mistakes that a veteran like Leightner shouldn’t make. Some awkward prose (e.g., “The girl behind the counter was a skinny little thing dotted—like a doughnut—with bright pink acne”) and a contrived ending don’t help. Reggie Nadleson does a better job of covering much the same geographic and emotional territory in his Artie Cohen novels (Fresh Kills
, etc.). (May)
