Fresh Kills by
Reggie Nadelson
hbk out June 06
Published by Heinemann
at £12.99
Reggie Nadelson is a woman and she writes the Artie Cohen series about
a Jewish-Russian New York cop. In this story, he is baby-sitting a
nephew, Billy Farone, who is on two weeks parole leave from a Juvenile
Offenders' centre in Florida. Billy killed a man two years earlier, but
Artie managed to influence the system enough to get him sent to a
psychiatric rehabilitation centre, rather than jail.
Billy, a highly articulate, intelligent and personable lad of fourteen,
idolises Artie, who is looking after him whilst his parents are in Europe.
They go fishing, eating and visiting the huge Russian community in
Brooklyn, which gives an illuminating insight into the massive immigrant
population around New York. Some areas around Coney Island and the
coast seem to be a little Moscow.
The action moves later in the book to Staten Island, a huge, strange,
almost alien place, where New York's garbage has been dumped for the
decades – including the remains of the Twin Towers. Then some deaths
occur and threats are made against Billy, the family of the man he stabbed
wanting him back in Florida. The suspicion mounts in spite of Artie's
efforts to defuse the situation and Staten Island is the scene for the
denouement. Apart from the story, the book is well worth reading for its
exposition of a side of New York that is rarely described – and of the
American way of life where everyone seems to spend most of their time
in cars and eat out of paper bags.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
; width=){kind=small}
Fresh Kills by
Reggie Nadelson
