Night Work

Starred review from February 22, 2016
The early days of Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution are the backdrop for Edgar-finalist Taylor’s superb sequel to 2015’s Night Life. Det. Mike Cassidy may be the godson of big-time crime boss Frank Costello, but he’s been honest enough during his 12 unruly years with the NYPD to make plenty of enemies both on the force and off. In 1958, Cassidy escorts an extradited Cuban murderer back to Batista’s corrupt Havana, where he discovers that his lost love, Dylan McCue, a committed KGB agent, is condemned to death for smuggling guns to Cuban rebels. Cassidy engineers her escape, only to learn that she’s married to a Soviet operative. Dylan leaves Cassidy, who comes from a privileged background, to booze and one-night stands. Months later, after the revolution succeeds, Cassidy and his partner, Tony Orso, are assigned to protect Castro on his triumphal visit to New York City. Taylor’s masterly command of historical detail and his powerful delineations of characters both real and fictional should help put this second novel, like his first, into contention for an Edgar Award. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore and Company.

February 15, 2016
Taylor's criminal traversal of the 1950s leaves behind J. Edgar Hoover (Night Life, 2015) to focus on an assassination plot against newly hatched dictator Fidel Castro. How new is Castro? So new that the FBI isn't yet sure that he's a communist, though they certainly have their suspicions. So new that in the first act of this tale, which seems to have been inspired by The Godfather, Part 2, he's still leading a ragtag band of guerrillas while NYPD Detective Michael Cassidy sits uneasily in Havana, partly because his work detail--returning a triple murderer to Cuba to stand trial--hasn't exactly turned out as he expected, partly because a routine trip to deliver his cargo to the prison La Cabana has given him a glimpse of his forbidden love, KGB agent Dylan McCue, along with a hint that she's about to be executed. Naturally, Cassidy has to bust her out, and naturally, he does, with some reluctant help from Sen. George Smathers, who's visiting from Florida on a fact-finding tour heavy on drinking and wenching, and some crucial post-breakout assistance from artist Carlos Ribera, a Castro sympathizer. Back in New York, Cassidy and his partner, Detective Tony Orso, are assigned a new homicide--an anonymous corpse tied to a chair that's been placed on display at 72nd Street and 5th Avenue--only to be yanked off it to serve on the task force that's been pulled together to protect Castro's life during the new leader's unofficial visit to New York. This part of the tale lifts a scene flagrantly from the first Godfather film, but Taylor adds enough false leads, double-crosses, assassins taking down other assassins, and felonies compounded by the good guys to make it his own. Sturdy, studly historical cop drama that's not as smooth or playful as Elmore Leonard but a good deal more accomplished than Max Allan Collins.

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February 1, 2016
Taylor gave us postwar New York in Night Life (2015), and this time he returns to the city but not before a side trip to one of the only other settings able to compete with '50s Manhattan for that smoky, jazz-filled, neon-lit noir mood: Havana in the last, desperate days before Castro closed down the party. Michael Cassidy, the New York cop from the monied Upper East Side, has been tasked with returning a Cuban prisoner to Havana for trial. Then things get interesting: Cassidy spots his former lover, KGB agent Dylan McCue, in a Cuban prison and, somewhat improbably, helps her escape. Slipping out of Cuba in the chaos following Castro's takeover, Cassidy returns to New York and is assigned to the security detail for the new Cuban leader's visit to the U.S. Meanwhile, he attempts to solve the murder of a handyman that may implicate some of his family's tony friends. Building to a slam-bang finale involving an assassination attempt, $100,000 in purloined Mob money, and cameos from Meyer Lansky and other marquee mobsters, the novel sails smoothly forward, nicely combining romance, historical detail, and, yes, that delightfully gin-soaked atmosphere.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2016
Armenian PI George Kocharyan keeps his one-man operation in Cambridge, England, going by tracking cheating spouses and benefits spongers in the months after his wife leaves him for a woman in her book group. Then Sylvia Bookerwife of the bursar at the college where George's father, now suffering from dementia, once workedhires George to check out her 18-year-old daughter, Lucy, whose recent behavior is suspect. Meanwhile, George's most recent client is accused of murdering his wife, who favored sex in public places and is found strangled with her husband's belt in a car park. Sandra, George's part-time assistant, who is urging him to register with an online dating site, agrees to have her son, Jason, a classmate of Lucy's, help with the investigation, until both George and Jason receive strong warnings to back off. Decades-old relationships lead to stunning discoveries that join disparate plot threads in this first of a projected series, an auspicious start by Rodford, a pseudonym for award-winning author Mischa Hiller (Saber Zoo, 2010).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)