by Gordon Greisman, 2024, Kindle Edition, Blackstone Publishing

This is a gritty detective story that is set in New York City in the 1950’s. The plot centers on a missing teenage girl whose father contracts with a private detective to find her. It turns out that things aren’t as they seem.

The story includes many real-life characters who inhabited New York during that in the 1950’s so it gives the reader a feeling of the culture. These include restaurant owners such as Toots Shor, jazz musicians such as Thelonious Monk, the poet, Alan Ginsberg, and the actor Marlon Brando. While some of their appearances are brief, others are more than mere cameos and they actually play a part in the story.

With so many characters involved, it is sometimes difficult to keep them all straight in my mind. The edition I read of War and Peace provided a list of the characters at the beginning of the novel. Perhaps that would have helped with this book.

I enjoyed the story, despite its grittiness.