The Granite Moth

In Wright’s so-so second novel featuring reluctant PI Kat Stone (after 2014’s The Red Chameleon), Kat is pursuing the big one who got away during her stint as an NYPD undercover detective—drug kingpin Salvatore Magrelli—until a second case distracts her. At Manhattan’s annual Halloween parade in Greenwich Village, Kat is watching the float from the Pink Parrot club pass by, with Kat’s friend Dolly and fellow drag queens performing, when a flaming baton ignites it, seemingly by accident. Or was it? Two fatalities and the revelation of prior death threats to Pink Parrot performers prompt club owner Lacy “Big Mamma” Burstyn to hire Kat to investigate. When a gay poker dealer is poisoned in a posh supper club operated by Magrelli’s wife, Kat suspects a link between the cases. Kat crisscrosses New York in various disguises, confronting persons of interest who unconvincingly flip-flop from good guy to bad guy and back again in a messy plot not enhanced by a depressed heroine. Agent: Penn Whaling, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency. (Nov.)