The Letter Writer
A novel
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- ¥710
発行者による作品情報
From the acclaimed author of Winter Work comes a gripping novel about a disgraced New York City cop in 1942 whose latest investigation will thrust him into a citywide web of possibly traitorous corruption from which he may not get out alive.
"Addictive, fast-paced, and thrilling.” —San Francisco Book Review
February 9, 1942. Southern cop Woodrow Cain arrives in New York City for a new position with the NYPD and is greeted with smoke billowing out from the SS Normandie, engulfed in flames on the Hudson. On Cain’s first day on the job, a body turns up in the same river. Unfamiliar with the milieu of mob bosses and crooked officials in the big city, Cain’s investigation stalls, until a strange man who calls himself Danziger enters his life. Danziger looks like a miscreant, but speaks five languages, has the manners of a gentleman, and is the one person who can help Cain identify the body. A letter writer for illiterate European immigrants, Danzinger has a seemingly boundless knowledge of the city’s denizens and networks—and possesses information that extends beyond the reach of his clients, hinting at an unfathomable past. As the body count grows, Cain and Danziger inch closer toward an underground web of possibly traitorous corruption...but in these murky depths, not even Danzinger can know what kind of danger will await them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
North Carolina police detective Woodrow Cain, the hero of this intelligent, if flawed, thriller, must overcome his provincial ways and navigate the corrupt, racist world of big-city law enforcement on his arrival in New York City in 1942. His first case, what appears to be a simple murder of a man found dead in the Hudson River, quickly leads Cain to an uncomfortable discovery: patriotic zeal has led the NYPD and the city's crime bosses to enter into a tacit understanding to work together to cleanse the city of troublesome immigrants. Fesperman (Unmanned) shows a skilled hand at creating the detail of wartime New York the vitality of the German Yorkville section, the hysteria following the bombing of the luxury liner the Normandie, the influence of mobster Meyer Lansky. Unfortunately, the plot splinters in several directions and never delivers on its initial promise. Still, the likable and well-drawn Cain will go over well with readers, especially those fond of historicals.
