Brooklyn Secrets

October 5, 2015
In Stein’s labored third Erica Donato mystery (after 2014’s Brooklyn Graves), Erica’s scholarly interest in how Brooklyn neighborhoods change gets her into trouble. While researching the tough Brownsville neighborhood of the 1930s at the local library, Erica, who’s in the CUNY graduate program, meets bright high school senior Savanna Lafayette. When Savanna is found badly beaten a few days later, Erica realizes that she knew Savanna’s mother, Zora Lafayette, when they were classmates in sociology of the family at Brooklyn College and offers to help. Erica and Zora soon must deal with the death of one of Savanna’s young friends. Meanwhile, in the course of Erica’s research into Brownsville’s criminal past and its notorious gangsters, she interviews two elderly women, whose childhood memories lead her on another archival search. She also learns more about her cab-driving father and her 15-year-old daughter, Chris. Neither history nor mystery is well served by this attempt to weave them together into one tale.

November 1, 2015
In the third Erica Donato mystery, the PhD candidate once again stumbles into trouble in the pursuit of her historical subjects. Visiting the Stone Avenue Library for her research on changes in immigration and crime rates in Brooklyn neighborhoods, Erica meets college-bound Savanna. That night, Savanna is savagely attacked. Watching a press conference about the attack, Erica recognizes the girl's mother from a college class and e-mails her an offer of help. Meanwhile, Erica's own teenage daughter uses the vast reach of social media to find out more about Savanna and the young men Erica believes were bothering her. Erica takes on yet another amateur investigation when one of the 90-year-old women she's interviewing for her dissertation asks her to dig into the disappearance of her union-worker older brother in 1936. Erica has a welcome distraction in her old friend Joe. Although it's clear that these two should move their decades-long friendship to the next level, widowed Erica is reluctant to take the plunge. Brooklyn's rich history comes to life in Stein's wonderful descriptions, and Erica is an engaging tour guide.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)