October 31, 2016
O’Mara’s absorbing fourth Raymond Donne mystery (after 2015’s Dead Red) finds the former New York City policeman, now dean of a middle school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at a crime scene in Manhattan. The murder victim, Marty Glover, was Ray’s late father’s former law partner and recent recipient of Williamsburg’s Man of the Year Award. A school parent, Maria Robles, later phones Ray to say that her son, Hector, after hearing of Marty’s death, has locked himself in his bedroom and is refusing to come out unless he talks to Ray. Hector had grown attached to Marty, who was sponsoring him in a mentorship program. After meeting with Hector, Ray is pulled into unofficially investigating Marty’s murder. With the help of Allison Rogers, his reporter girlfriend, and friend Edgar Martinez O’Brien, a technophile and civilian crime-fighting junkie, Ray pursues a trail that leads to long-buried secrets, a two-decades-old rape case, and shady legal shenanigans. O’Mara skillfully ties all the various plot lines together. Agents: Erin Niumata and Maura Teitelbaum, Folio Literary Management.
December 1, 2016
Harry Stover is murdered at a party in his honor as Man of the Year in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood. In attendance is police-officer-turned-teacher Raymond Donne (from Dead Red, 2015). Ray's uncle is the chief of police, and his late father was Stover's law partner. The last time Donne saw Stover was when Donne was helping one of his students get a place in Stover's Bridges to Success program. As in his three previous outings, Donne can't keep his nose out of things once he's got a whiff of a compelling case. Donne's uncle worries that Ray will use his unofficial investigation to feed scoops to his journalist girlfriend. What he should be more worried about is the high-profile hornet's nest Donne starts poking when one of Stover's former clients becomes a suspect. Donne's rapport with his students, his larger-than-life uncle, and his smart, strong-willed girlfriend make him stand out in a crowd of quasi-amateur New York detectives. A series that deserves some more attention.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
October 15, 2016
A fourth demonstration that even if you take Raymond Donne out of the NYPD, you can't take him out of the criminal action in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood.When the benefit honoring attorney Marty Stover's charitable work as founder of Bridges to Success is derailed by the guest of honor's death, Ray is right on the scene, standing outside the men's room where Marty, stabbed in the thigh, staggered to bleed copiously out. Ray's namesake uncle, chief of detectives for the NYPD, is convinced that his nephew's experience as dean at a local middle school makes him the perfect person to interview Maeve Barrett, the young coat check girl, and from that point on, Ray (Dead Red, 2015, etc.) improbably gets pulled deeper and deeper into a case he has no business touching. He phones his girlfriend, reporter Allison Rogers, to make sure she gets the scoop. He takes along his cop junkie friend Edgar Martinez O'Brien when he goes to visit Marty Stover Jr., who's reported a break-in at his father's office, and then, having lectured Edgar on his law-breaking folly in downloading the contents of the victim's computer, helps himself to the fruits of the poisonous tree. He asks questions about a mysterious painting that somehow passed from the parents of Ray's student Hector Robles to Marty's possession and more questions about the 20-year-old case in which Marty Sr.'s client Billy Taylor pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, incurring the well-heeled wrath of Billy's twin, Bobby, who retired from baseball to run a string of car dealerships and sit on the board of Bridges to Success. A child could see where many of these complications are going, but the ex-cop hero takes quite a bit longer. Maybe the NYPD didn't lose such a great investigator with his departure after all.
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