A Cold Case [Hardcover]

Philip Gourevitch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2001

A few years ago, Andy Rosenzweig, chief investigator for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, was abruptly reminded of an old double homicide: a friend from his youth, a former prizefighter, had been murdered along with another man in 1970. It bothered Rosenzweig that the killer had eluded capture for nearly three decades. He resolved to track down the fugitive and -- if he was still alive -- to close the case.

In a surprising, intensely dramatic narrative, Philip Gourevitch brings together the story of Rosenzweig's pursuit with a mesmerizing account of the killer's criminal personality and his decades on the lam. A Cold Case carries us deep into the lives and minds, the passions and perplexities, of two extraordinary men who embody opposing but quintessentially American codes of being-that of the lawman and that of the outlaw. Set in a New York City milieu that has all but disappeared, and written with a keen ear for the vibrant idiom of the men and women who once peopled its streets, this is a book for our times, written with a force and immediacy that compel attention.

When Gourevitch's first book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, appeared in 1998, the novelist Robert Stone said of the author, "There is no limit to what we may expect of him." With A Cold Case Gourevitch sustains the promise of his earlier work, masterfully transforming a criminal investigation into a searching literary reckoning with the urges that drive one man to murder and another to hunt murderers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Frank Koehler was only 15 when he shot a friend in the back for double-crossing him. That's the sort of guy he was--violent, Mob-connected, and remorse-free. In the same rough-and-tumble postwar neighborhood on Manhattan's West Side lived a very different young man: Andy Rosenzweig, rigorously straight and determined to become a policeman at a time when cops were more likely to be taking naps or bribes than nabbing criminals. Years later, in 1970, Koehler murdered two men after an argument in a restaurant. One of the victims was a friend of Rosenzweig's. It was a straightforward case, but in a typical show of the NYPD's ineptitude, the case was closed when someone decided to declare Koehler dead, allowing him to slip away.

Twenty-seven years after the murders, on the eve of Rosenzweig's retirement as chief of investigations, he reopened the case, determined not to leave without catching the murderer of his friend. Philip Gourevitch, who last examined murder in the award-winning We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, is more interested in the personalities of killers and those who pursue them than the drama of murder itself. As a result, A Cold Case is short on tension, but it is an excellent character study. Gourevitch immerses us in the "white hoodlum milieu of another time and from a city which no longer really exists," and he conjures up the particular moral universe of each character--Rosenzweig; murder victim Richie Glennon, an ex-prizefighter who walked the fence between the good guys and the bad guys; Murray Richman, the Mob-defending lawyer from the Bronx who likes murder cases because there's "one less witness to worry about"; and Koehler himself, now elderly but still unremorseful. Gourevitch's skillful handling raises intriguing contradictions and questions, not least this one Koehler asks about himself: "Why would people still think good of this asshole?" Now, that's a story. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

In 1970, a New York criminal named Frankie Koehler killed two men in cold blood, then disappeared. Over the decades, he was all but given up for dead. Nothing haunts a cop like loose ends, however, and 30 years later lawman and fugitive at long last crossed paths. Basing this book on his article of the same title, New Yorker staff writer and NBCC and L.A. Times award-winning author Gourevitch revisits this case. Gourevitch's first book (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda) dealt with the Rwandan genocide and that region's judicial vacuum; the scope here is smaller but, as Gourevitch shows, murder is a seemingly inescapable aspect of the human condition. In clean prose, the author follows former NYPD officer Andy Rosenzweig (now an investigator with the Manhattan D.A.'s office), who, like Koehler, was raised on the streets of postwar New York, a city that has all but disappeared except in the hands of capable writers. And Gourevitch lets his near-perfect pitch dialogue do much of the work. "I wouldn't kill anybody for money under any conditions.... That's a scumbag does that," Koehler says. The only jarring moments in this otherwise elegant and restrained narrative are the sudden intrusions of the pronoun "I." This residue of New Yorker style reminds readers that the material is not entirely fresh. But that is a minor complaint, for as Rosenzweig says, quoting a fellow officer, "Who speaks for the dead? Nobody. As a rule, nobody speaks for the dead, unless we do." Gourevitch has secured a place next to Rosenzweig in that lonely and all-important choir. 12 b&w photos. (July 11) Forecast: Thanks to the reputation Gourevitch established with his first book, this will be widely reviewed. During July and August, he'll do promotion in New York City; after Labor Day, he will embark on a five-city tour. This will sell handsomely.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; First edition (July 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374125139
• ISBN-13: 978-0374125134
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,655,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good as far as it goes, which isn't too far at all, July 28, 2001

By 

A reader in Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Cold Case (Hardcover)

Gourevitch's earlier book was such a fine piece of writing and journalism that I had high expectations for this one when I spotted it at a bookstore a couple of days ago. It should be noted, especially for those shopping on Amazon, that it is a very slim volume. That they were able to squeeze nearly 200 pages out of the original manuscript says more about the printers, triple spacing and wide fonts that it does about the author's legwork. I was able to finish it in slightly less than two hours, which makes it an expensive read for the time it takes up. It is perhaps no coincidence that the story itself seems better suited to a Reader's Digest than a full length book treatment (but then again this is hardly a full length book).

Gourevitch seems motivated to write a sort of hard boiled story about a kid on the wrong side of the law and the dedicated cop who brings him to justice. He keeps his sentences very short, and his descriptions are limited to characters who look like Bogart and bad guys with ruddy complexions and New York dialects. Perhaps he was aiming for a sort of genre story, but the format limits him considerably. The cop's story is hagiographic and the murderer's tale is told with a sympathy that Gourevitch feels compelled to deny. The capture is embarassingly easy (and points out rather awkwardly that police incompetence might be more responsible for the murderer's time on the lam than his genius) and the subsequent denouement couched in cliches rather than insight. (I cringed at the portrayal of the money grubbing Jewish lawyer who, apparently, performed most of his work in this case for free).

This is not to say that the book is racist, but hackneyed and while the story can hold your interest, it stays disappointingly close the surface. If you are a fan of the true crime genre, then this might make a quick and interesting read, but certainly Gourevitch is capable of something much deeper and challenging than this.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, August 26, 2001

By 

G. Kellner (Westfield, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Cold Case (Hardcover)

I expected much more from this book. OK, Frank Koehler shoots two people and then flees to California (escapes isn't really the word--he just kind of walks off). Andy Roesenweig decides to catch him and after only several pages of looking for him, half way through this book, they find him. Well, so what? There's no real drama, no spectacular moment. The only part of the book that I felt was really intriuging was Frank's perspective on himself. Unfortunately, this was only a few pages long and while his own perspective is certainly a good start in exploring a criminal mind, I felt readers might benefit more from different views--perhaps from psychologists or criminal profilers or other relatives who knew him. I mean, if there's no action to speak of, why else would you read this? I felt the book didn't really go into ANY aspect of the case in any detail. Very disappointing!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars True tale needs expansion, August 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Cold Case (Hardcover)

Very little new information is conveyed in this story beyond the original article in the New Yorker magazine. Could have been expanded to include additional information, perhaps more interviews with the deceased' families, pictures of the deceased when alive. It would be interesting to hear more about the detective Rosenzwieg's interest in these characters whom he seems fascinated with. Rosenzweig himself is an interesting character. Perhaps he could be tempted to write his own stories about crime and other unsolved cases.