REVIEW: Red Hook by Gabriel Cohen

Red Hook: A Jack Leigh­n­ter Mys­tery by Gabriel Cohen, pub­lished 2001 by St. Martin’s Press. This is the first book in a new mys­tery series fea­tur­ing vet­eran cop Jack Leigh­n­ter. The title takes its name from a South Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hood and here is the back blurb:

It’s not the dead body–Jack Leight­ner has seen hun­dred of bod­ies in his tour with the NYPD. It’s not the dank setting–the nar­row banks along Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. So why does the sight of the fatally stabbed young man make the detec­tive almost faint in the canal’s tan­gled weeds? Jack doesn’t under­stand why he becomes obsessed with this low-priority case, why he allows it to jeop­ar­dize his career and even his life. Espe­cially since the inves­ti­ga­tion draws him exactly where he doesn’t want to go: into the heart of Red Hook. The neigh­bor­hood is Leightner’s bad dream, scene of his trou­bled child­hood and a ter­ri­ble secret. The place also com­pels Jack’s estranged son Ben, a young doc­u­men­tary film­maker fas­ci­nated by its his­tory. The Hook has been home to dock­work­ers and drug deal­ers, Al Capone and Joey Gallo, a giant pub­lic hous­ing project, and one of the nation’s great­est ports. Ben wants to find out why the once-thriving water­front com­mu­nity has become a beau­ti­ful ruin–and why it has dam­aged his own fam­ily. In Gabriel Cohen’s grip­ping first novel, this strange ter­rain is where Jack Leight­ner must seek his own redemption–and even, per­haps, the sal­va­tion of Red Hook itself. More than a crime story, Red Hook is a deep and sym­pa­thetic explo­ration of the mys­ter­ies of human nature, the curse and bless­ings of fam­ily, and one unfor­get­table place.

My thoughts are that I really do not need another series to fol­low but this mys­tery was pretty good. Jack Leight­ner is a vet­eran cop with bag­gage.  He is fifty years old, divorced with one grown son named Ben, who is a com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­pher. The two men have an awk­ward rela­tion­ship. Ben is reserved and uncom­mu­nica­tive because Jack was an absent father dur­ing his youth.  Ben decides to make a doc­u­men­tary that focuses on his father’s old neigh­bor­hood in Red Hook.  Only prob­lem is that his father rarely if ever speaks of his past or his fam­ily. Mov­ing on.  Jack lives in Mid­wood, a quiet Brook­lyn sub­urb where the crime rate is pretty low. He’s a good tenet,  wor­ry­ing over his land­lord, Mr. Gard­ner, a recently wid­owed and elderly, active man who, like Jack, lives alone. Mr. Gardner’s son rarely comes to visit and Jack tries to include him and pro­vide him companionship.

When the story opens, Jack catches a case in Red Hook, in his old neigh­bor­hood, that is now rife with vio­lence and drug abuse. A young, His­panic male is found stabbed to death by the Gowanus Canal. Motive remains elu­sive with no wit­nesses save one barge cap­tain. Jack nearly blacks out when he sees the stab wounds and that has more to do with his own per­sonal demons. Jack’s mem­o­ries of his past and his rela­tion­ship with his father and his younger brother Peter veers off into another major sub­plot in the story. We get brief flash­backs that hints at a trou­bled child­hood that is quite heart breaking.

The set­ting is equally as impor­tant as the char­ac­ters, so, the author branches off into the his­tory of Red Hook, telling us that it was once pop­u­lated by blue col­lar worker’s and long­shore­man work­ing the docks. Jack’s father was a Russ­ian immi­grant who was a steve­dore back in the early 60’s. The neigh­bor­hood was a vastly dif­fer­ent land­scape peo­pled with a con­ser­v­a­tive work­ing class. Then the city plan­ner came in and con­demned the Leight­ner home along with thou­sands of other fam­i­lies in favor of the expressway. 

Robert Moses gut­ted Red Hook and many peo­ple like Jack’s father were destroyed by it. Busi­nesses failed to thrive, ship­ping tech­nol­ogy left many dock work­ers unem­ployed. Jack’s father became “mean and hard after that”, going on pay­day ben­ders and tak­ing his frus­tra­tions out on his fam­ily. Jack’s mem­o­ries of Red Hook are a mix bag of sad and happy mem­o­ries. He avoids the neigh­bor­hood when­ever he can. But there’s one mem­ory of Red Hook that he never speaks of to nobody and that is what eats inside him every­day and affects his rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple who mat­ter most in his life.

There is a bit of hope and pos­si­bly a hint at hap­pi­ness for the hero.  Jack’s younger part­ner, Gary Dask­iv­itch, sets him up  on a blind date with Michelle Wilber, a woman in her early for­ties who’s a party orga­nizer. When Jack and Michelle meet, they hit it off and that cul­mi­nates into a one night stand. I liked Michelle a lot. She doesn’t take a lot of the excuses Jack dishes out when he doesn’t call her for a week. In fact, she lets him know that she’s  moved on to some­body else.  Jack real­izes that Michelle is a good woman and he doesn’t want to lose her so he he does take a hard look at him­self and decides to make some changes for the better.

Jack is a sym­pa­thetic char­ac­ter.  He was a bad father and hus­band. He chain smokes and drinks heav­ily when he is emo­tion­ally over­wrought. He has a guilt com­plex and feels that he doesn’t deserve hap­pi­ness due to some child­hood tragedy that eats at him. Between the mur­der mys­tery, the police pol­i­tics, poverty, race and vio­lence of South Brook­lyn, the author suc­ceeds in giv­ing read­ers  an authen­tic voice and feel to his char­ac­ters and their world. My only com­plaint is that towards the end of the novel, the plot turns pre­dictable when the mys­tery gets resolved. The dia­logue sounds authen­tic and the author tends to info dump a bit but over­all, a good novel.  As for Jack, he exor­cises his demons and wins the girl back. I look for­ward to read­ing more from this author. Rec­om­mended for mys­tery fans who don’t mind the mys­tery tak­ing a back­seat to character.  My grade, B+.  I’ve already got The Grav­ing Dock lined up to read next.

This book is avail­able in ebook for­mat. The novel seems to be OOP as of this writ­ing and unavail­able. Check your local library for a copy.

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