Dirty Metal
A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Standout debut. . . LaMothe is a startling and original talent.” —CrimeReads
New York City, 1992. The city is rough. Parker Snow is rougher.
Parker Snow is the best crime reporter at her tabloid, The New York Street. Or at least she was. Since a colossal screwup landed her on the sidelines, she’s been demoted to covering the Russian mob that's flooded Brighton Beach after the fall of the USSR.
When Parker stumbles on the body of a 20-year-old woman in Brooklyn with no witnesses or suspects, the cops want to write off as just another pin in the crime map. But Parker doesn’t buy it—especially when a second woman turns up dead under nearly identical circumstances, this time in Chinatown.
Will Parker stay in her lane?
Doubtful.
Now she's running down two stories at once: a simmering mafia turf war, and a possible serial murderer stalking the city. Fighting the pull of the little orange pill bottle she always has in her pocket, Parker will stop at nothing to find out the truth.
That is, if her demons—or the killer—don’t get to her first.
A CrimeReads 2026 Most Anticipated Thriller • “A bold debut befitting its bold heroine.” —Kirkus (starred review) • "A razor-sharp debut." — Lauren Nossett, ITW Thriller Award–winning author • "Vibrating with heart, grit, and an uncompromising moral clarity." — Alafair Burke, NYT bestselling author
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
LaMothe resurrects the grungy New York City of the early 1990s in this solid debut thriller centered on a pill-popping tabloid journalist. Parker Snow has been The New York Street's crime reporter ("no qualifiers") for seven years, but after she bungles a big story, she's reassigned to the organized crime beat in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where she's tasked with investigating gangsters who have moved to the States after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Though Parker takes pains to stay in her lane, she can't repress her curiosity when she discovers the dead body of 20-year-old Carla Russo, who appears to be the victim of a fatal mugging, during a night out. With the cops assigned to Carla's case treating the dead woman as just "another pin in the crime map," Parker starts investigating on her own. She doubles her efforts when another young woman is found dead under near-identical circumstances in Manhattan's Chinatown, raising the prospect that a serial killer might be stalking the streets of New York. LaMothe hits the beats of a satisfying neo-noir—a deliciously dark atmosphere, a wounded hero, a corrupt urban underbelly—with ease. Fans of reporter-sleuths like Bruce DeSilva's Liam Mulligan will hope to hear more from Parker soon.
