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.
Technorati Tags: Mystery Reviews, Gabriel Cohen, New York, Detectives
