Synopsis

It’s a late summer Sunday in downtown New York City, and Artie Cohen is getting married. Watching the sun rising over the East River, he’s content.

A message comes in from an old friend, Sid McKay, asking Artie to come out to Red Hook in Brooklyn. It’s his wedding day, but Artie owes Sid, so he goes. On arriving he finds a dead man spreadeagled in the water off the old docks. When Sid eventually shows up, he’s scared, edgy and evasive; Artie suspects he’s holding something back.

Even at his own wedding party, later that day, Artie can’t stop thinking about Sid. Why has the death of a vagrant spooked him so much? It’s not his case, but the more he digs, the more it drags him in, implicating – and threatening – his closest friends, among them a Russian magnate and a former lover. In the pre-election atmosphere of political tension and fear, Artie becomes involved in an increasingly obsessive quest to uncover the betrayals that have led to death on the Red Hook waterfront…

Praise for Red Hook

‘Ah, the Artie Cohen novels of Reggie Nadelson! Readers are always assured of a sardonic, fast moving read in these highly diverting and (highly idiomatic) books – as is the case with Red Hook… As ever with Nadelson, it’s the adroit juggling of the personal and plotting elements of the books that is so consistently successful.’
Crime Time

‘Its rare that crime writing should so passionately and precisely examine its own time. Its also reassuring to find a writer who is so magnificently up to the job.’
Literary Review, Book of The Month