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Book Description

It is now almost a year after the World Trade Center attacks, and New York City is still struggling with the horrible aftermath. For Captain Bill Donovan, Chief of Special Investigations for the NYPD, watching helplessly as his beloved city was torn apart was painful and heartbreaking.

Therefore, when the body of notorious real estate developer James Victor is found in the basement of a Coney Island candy store, Donovan throws himself into the investigation as a way to ease the pain. Victor certainly has not been endearing himself to the local blue-collar Coney Island crowd in the recent months - he is the driving force behind a multimillion-dollar urban renewal project aimed at tearing down the old charming buildings and storefronts near the boardwalk in favor of erecting lavish condos. Soon, Donovan and his friend and associate, Brooklyn's massively muscled Brian Moskowitz, enter a world where the financial stakes are high and the emotional stakes are even higher.

From Publishers Weekly

In his ninth Bill Donovan mystery (after 2001's Murder on the Waterfront), Edgar-winner Jahn joins the ranks of those attempting to use the attacks on the World Trade Center as a plot device, with indifferent results. Murder interrupts NYPD captain Donovan's quiet day at the beach with his wife and son: the battered corpse of a Donald Trump-like developer surfaces in the basement of an old-fashioned candy store, whose future has been jeopardized by the developer's gentrification scheme. The captain interviews the many who wished the man dead, including an ex-wife, his mistress and members of the Coney Island Committee for Common Sense, which hoped to preserve the community. The superficial depiction of New York City, the one-dimensional characters and the almost arbitrary solution, which offers little room for Donovan to exercise his skills, fail to engage the reader.

From Booklist

Some writers write for the eye; others, for the ear. Jahn writes for the nose. His latest police procedural, set on and around Coney Island's boardwalk, constantly delivers healthy whiffs of sea air, sand, sunblock, and hot dogs smothered in onions from Nathan's Famous Hotdog Stand. The Edgar-winning Jahn's emphasis on the smell of places is part of what gives his New York City procedurals such immediacy. His latest (the ninth in the series) places NYPD captain Bill Donovan on a rare day off at the Coney Island beach. Donovan's idyll is broken by a summons to a crime scene at a candy store just off the boardwalk. The body of a real-estate developer who has been threatening to tear down the old Coney Island buildings has been discovered in the basement. Although the tour through the suspects is a bit predictable, Jahn's dead-on cop patter and in-depth characterization make this fascinating. And it smells great, too.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Connie Fletcher

About Author

Michael Jahn has roots that run deeper in New York than any other novelist. When he writes about New York, he draws on several hundred years of colorful family history. Among his forebears in the City That Never Sleeps were a Spanish-American sailor (who lived in Brooklyn and, appropriately, was a gunner aboard the USS Brooklyn during the Civil War); a Manhattan Irishman who drove a horse-drawn trolley; a personal maid to a branch of the Roosevelt family; a sportswriter at the legendary Brooklyn Eagle newspaper who later became the editorial page editor of the Queens-based Long Island Press; and, appropriately for the author of Murder on the Waterfront, the German-American proprietor of a landmark waterfront hotel, saloon, and eventual speakeasy.

Michael Jahn began his daily newspaper career at The New York Times before turning to fiction. After winning the Edgar Award for The Quark Maneuver, he began the Bill Donovan mysteries with Night Rituals. His newest, Murder in Coney Island, is the ninth Donovan novel.

Book Dimension

Height (mm) 215 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Width (mm) 162