Praise for Blood Count
The Guardian, February 19
Nadelson's ninth Artie Cohen novel finds the Russian-born NYPD detective investigating the death of an ailing Russian woman, one of the few white occupants of a once-grand apartment block in Harlem. Cohen is alerted to the death by an ex-girlfriend who lives there, but when he arrives there's a strange air of something having been covered up. Blood Count is a traditional whodunit in the sense that the main suspects are contained within the building. Set shortly after Obama's victory, it is passionately concerned with race and progress, and with channelling the memories of those tenants old enough to remember when Louis Armstrong was their neighbour. But it's also wonderfully claustrophobic. As one character observes: "[People] visit, they listen for each other, soon as they hear footsteps in the hall, they pop out of their doors, you know?" We know. (see full review)
Daily Mail February 17
New York's Harlem is undergoing gentrification and every developer wants a piece of it. Which is why, when elderly people start dying prematurely in a desirable apartment building, detective Artie Cohen thinks he smells a rat.
He’s been summoned there by his beloved ex-girlfriend Lily who is hysterical about the death of her friend, but when Artie shows up she clearly has something to hide. Not only that, but there seems to be another boyfriend on the scene - and he’s a cop to boot.
That settles it for Artie: he’s going to stay put and find out what’s eating her.
Londongrad, Nadelson’s last great thriller centred around dodgy Russians in London. Here too, Russian gangs play a big part.
But, as always with Nadelson, it’s the way she tells it rather than the story itself. She makes Harlem with its fascinating up-and-down history live and breathe on the page. Humming with suspense, this is New York noir at its best. (see full review)
New York Times "Crime Books of 2010"
Marilyn Stasio has chosen "Blood Count" the lastest Artie Cohen Mystery as one of her Notable Crime Books of 2010
"Choosing books for picky friends can be humbling. There’s always one smarty-pants who has read not only the gift book but everything else in the author’s oeuvre. Another recipient refuses to consider any story about “some stupid girl.” And how about that ingrate who scorns the genre altogether, claiming to have developed more mature tastes? I’m speaking, of course, about buying books for children. Picking crime novels for grown-ups is a breeze. (Read More)"
Herman Leonard's "Jazz"
"JAZZ,
the definitive book of Herman Leonard's photographs
has just been published in the US and will be published
next month in the UK. It will be the last, too,
as Herman died in August. Sadly, he never saw the
book. But at his request I wrote the introductory
essay to what I think of as one of the foremost
documents of Jazz by one of its greatest champions."
Review of "Jazz"
Washington
Post
By David Rowell
Friday, November 19, 2010
Although music itself can't be photographed, no photographer ever got closer to pulling it off than Herman Leonard. And yet the publication of "Jazz," Leonard's remarkable book of photographs, is both reason to celebrate and to grieve: Many of the most iconic photographs in all of jazz - or of any music, for that matter - are collected in this lavish document of mostly the bebop era, the late 1940s and 1950s.
But the sad note here is that Leonard didn't get to see the published book; he died in August at 87. With his passing, and the recent deaths of two other legendary jazz photographers - William Gottlieb, 89, in 2006 and William Claxton, 80, in 2008 - we're unlikely to see another book of photographs that captures this chapter of this music with this scope of ambition. […] We can be grateful, though, that Herman Leonard was there to show us exactly what it felt like to step into a jazz club such as Birdland or the Roost. You can't understand jazz without hearing it, and you can't fully understand it without looking at Leonard's "Jazz." ( read full review)
Blood Count: a new Artie Cohen Mystery
Synopsis
Recent reviews for "Blood Count"
Reggie Nadelson has a real feel for the sources
of life in the New York neighborhoods she celebrates
in her vibrant mysteries featuring Artie Cohen,
a Russian-born detective who knows the city with
the intimacy of a lover. Nadelson sends Artie to
Harlem in BLOOD COUNT (Walker, $26), initially
to feel the pulse of the district on the night
Barack Obama is elected president, and later to
help a friend cope with the suspicious death of
an old Russian woman at the Louis Armstrong Apartments
in Sugar Hill.
This grand old building, perpetually besieged by
opportunistic developers, is more than an attractive
murder setting. It’s also a stage where the elderly
residents can regale Artie with wonderful accounts
of legends like Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Strayhorn.
Even the stories that lack a pivotal function in
the plot, like the reverential one about Paul Robeson,
contribute to the broader message: that some neighborhoods
can always find hope in a dream. –
Marilyn Stasio NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
From the opening scene to the final pages, BLOOD COUNT is an immensely satisfying
read. What this novel does that so many others fail to do is completely engage
readers in the story and its characters. Detective Artie Cohen, a Russian immigrant
himself, is called to help translate a Russian document pinned by knife to a
dead body. This will be only the first of several murders in this intriguing
mystery.
More disturbing is a call he soon receives from
his former girlfriend (for whom he still pines).
She has discovered her Russian neighbor is dead,
and she is desperate for Artie's help, blaming
herself for the death. The death is just one of
many that populate this novel, all set in the historic
Louis Armstrong Apartments on Sugar Hill in Harlem.
What author Reggie Nadelson does so well is truly
engage readers with her flawed but fascinating
characters. Each resident has a history and traits
that make them suspicious yet fascinating. The
Louis Armstrong building residents seem to form
a small village, with plenty of gossip and backstory
to make them characters we want to learn more about.
As Nadelson metes out the clues, the motives seem
to point in new directions at important turning
points, never giving away too much of the final
truth.
Even without the mystery, readers would surely
be drawn in by the lives of these characters and
the history of their neighborhood over the years.
Setting the novel shortly after the Obama election
keeps it fresh and contemporary, easy to relate
to.
Then there is Artie Cohen himself, a detective
who can't set aside his natural inclination for
hunting down the truth, even if it reveals something
about Lily he doesn't want to know. There's the
struggle to get along with Lily's new boyfriend,
another detective with whom he must work the murder
cases. There's the pursuit to win the girl back.
And there is the struggle in Artie's own life,
as the case raises old memories of Russia and his
own family.
BLOOD COUNT is a captivating mystery
novel on every level. It takes on an interesting
area of New York, Harlem, and its history, interweaving
that with the Russian immigrant experience. It
gets to the heart of human relationships and human
frailties. In addition, it presents aged characters
(those well past retirement) in a very accessible,
multidimensional light. Kudos to Nadelson for a
job well done on every level in BLOOD COUNT. It's
a mystery well worth reading.
REVIEWING THE EVIDENCE.com
Set in December 2008, Nadelson’s
ninth mystery featuring Russian émigré and NYPD
detective Artie Cohen (after 2009’s Londongrad)
shows her at the top of her game. Cohen is roused
in the middle of the night by a call from a former
girlfriend, journalist Lily Hanes, who asks for
his help dealing with a dead neighbor, Marianna
Simonova. Despite Hanes’s claim that Simonova died
of natural causes in her Harlem apartment, Cohen
suspects Hanes isn’t telling him everything. When
his digging reveals that another elderly resident
of Simonova’s building died unexpectedly about
six months earlier, he wonders whether a desire
to spare the seriously ill suffering was behind
both deaths. Alternatively, the tenants may have
been in the way of an ambitious developer’s plans
to upgrade the building. Nadelson has few peers
at incorporating a strong whodunit plot into a
contemporary police inquiry, but her real strength
is Cohen himself, a tortured but sympathetic soul
whose close relationships are never straightforward
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