False Negative

April 23, 2012
Twenty years after Brides of Blood, Koenig weighs in with another gritty, no-holds-barred, hard-boiled whodunit set in the 1950s. Gifted journalist Adam Jordan, too tired to attend a congressman’s routine speech, fakes an article, only to learn later from his editor that the politician dropped dead before going on stage to deliver it. Now a pariah, Jordan manages only to land work with a seedy New York City true crime magazine, Real Detective. When he tries to solve the fetishistic strangulation murder of an attractive 22-year-old waitress found hog-tied on a Long Island beach, his probing leads him to more corpses and a narrow escape from death. Razor-sharp prose (e.g., “Wing’s dreams were short on specifics until he was in New York with a knife in his pocket”) and a fast-moving plot will please Mickey Spillane and Cornell Woolrich fans. With any luck, readers won’t have to wait another 20 years for Koenig’s next book. Agent: Pamela Malpas, Harold Ober Associates.

June 15, 2012

Set in 1950s Atlantic City, Koenig's (Floater; Brides of Blood) first novel in nearly 20 years revolves around Adam Jordan, a newspaper reporter on the rise who is fired for submitting a fake article about a congressman's speech he was too tired to cover (he gets caught because the speaker died before he could deliver it). Blacklisted from other newspapers for this transgression, Jordan begins writing for Real Detective, a true-crime magazine on its last legs. Tracking the story of a beauty queen hopeful found dead on the beach, Jordan runs into resistance from some very powerful men. VERDICT The snappy, fast-paced story follows the traditional hard-boiled style one comes to expect from this publisher, and Koenig's characters, sense of place, and turns of phrase make the novel stand out. Even characters with no more than a cameo are fully formed and linger in the imagination. A perfect summer treat for fans of gritty mysteries by authors like Lawrence Block and Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake).--Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2012
Koenig's first novel, Floater, was nominated for an Edgar in 1986. His last book, Brides of Blood (1993), was named a New York Times Notable Book. Where has he been for the last two decades? A little hasty Googling doesn't really answer that question, but False Negative, his tough-talking, hard-boiled new book set in seedy, corrupt Atlantic City in 1953, offers crime devotees hope that he's truly back. Beginning with the kinky murder of a Miss America wannabe, the novel, written with pulpy panache, posits that many young women on the beauty-pageant circuit became party girls for pageant officals who were willing to kill to keep the party going. Sadly, the plot unravels a bit when a reporter moves to New York to edit a true-crime pulp magazine and investigates the story, but Koenig's gritty Jersey Shore milieu, a host of brazenly on-the-make characters (only Louis Satchmo Armstrong is essentially honorable), and lots of brilliant noirish dialogue make False Negative a must for readers who like their crime fiction old school.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)