Customer Reviews

Neptune Avenue: A Jack Leightner Crime Novel (Jack Leightner Crime Novels)

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Neptune Avenue is the third in a series of crime novels by Gabriel Cohen featuring Jack Leightner, a Homicide Detective, in South Brooklyn. But from the very beginning of the series the stories are more than murders and "who done it". The reader is given a complex psychological description of a man with a past that affects his present life- from his alcoholic father, to the death of his brother at an early age, to a failed marriage, and trouble in all his personal relationships. Neptune Avenue continues the series with murders to be solved and relationships to be examined as Jack Leightner seeks to find the murderer of two young women who were found hanged, and the murderer of a man with whom he once shared a hospital room when he was shot years before (in Red Hook, his first novel with Detective Leightner). In the process Leightner falls in love with the man's widow.

Neptune Avenue is clearly a masculine book, but with a sensitivity to human relationships that women will find alluring. It is compelling reading to anyone who has lived in Brooklyn and is familiar with the locations he mentions- Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Red Hook. The book is a "page turner". I do not understand why these books have not been picked up by a movie studio as they would make great films. I am looking forward to his next book featuring Jack Leightner.

Brooklyn may have lost the Dodgers many years ago, but on a more positive note, in recent times it has gained Jack Leightner, homicide detective, in the series based on various sections of that borough. Initially, he appeared in "Red Hook," then in "The Graving Dock." Now, in the third in the series, he solves crimes in two areas: Coney Island/Brighton Beach and Crown Heights.

While recovering from a bullet wound, Jack befriends a Russian émigré sharing his hospital room. The roommate owns a fish import-export business in the Fulton Fish Market and is married to a very attractive woman. When they are released from the hospital, the two men rehabilitate together, walking, sharing steam baths, and getting closer. Subsequently his friend is shot dead, and Jack takes it personally. He becomes entangled romantically with the widow, who points him toward another Russian (Brighton Beach is home to a large segment of that population), and Jack attempts to prove him guilty of the crime.

Meanwhile two women are found hanged in the Crown Heights section, inhabited primarily by Hasidic Jews. Beaver fibers are located on each scene, where the women were determined to be strangled rather than suicide victims. Jack proceeds to follow each case while carrying on his affair with the widow, jeopardizing his career.

Each of the three novels in the series portrays Brooklyn, its sights, sounds and history, with an authentic flavor. And the author's ability to write a clear police procedural places him on a par with the best of the genre. In this latest chapter, we learn more about Leightner, the person, and it makes him more human than superman. All to the good. Recommended.

In Gabriel Cohen's "Neptune Avenue," Brooklyn South homicide detective Jack Leightner tackles two very different cases. The first is set in Crown Heights, where someone is killing young black women and trying to make their deaths appear to be suicides. The second involves the slaying of a Russian businessman, Daniel Lelo, whom Jack had befriended two years earlier while they were both recovering in the hospital from gunshot wounds. Now Lelo is dead, shot once again, this time in the center of his forehead. Jack has been divorced for more than fifteen years and has a twenty-five year old son, Ben, whom he rarely sees. After he was dumped by the woman he hoped to marry, his social life hits bottom, and he has become something of a recluse. When he interviews Leo's widow, Eugenia (Zhenya), he is deeply attracted to the vulnerable and attractive woman.

Jack shares equal billing with the colorful borough where most of the action takes place. "Ideally, a cop here should be a walking ethnic encyclopedia and a speaker of several dozen languages." Cohen describes Brooklyn in vivid detail, taking us from Crown Heights, with its large population of African-Americans, West Indians, and Chasidic Jews to Brighton Beach, known as Little Odessa because the majority of its residents emigrated from the former Soviet Union. One particularly memorable character is Semyon Balakutis, a "tough guy" who "had the sour cockiness of a playground bully." He and Daniel had words shortly before Lelo died, and Jack suspects that this thug may have had a hand in Lelo's murder. The author pays visits to the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan, where Daniel Lelo worked, as well as Coney Island, where "seagulls cawed overhead like shrill party noisemakers, the rides in the two amusement parks clanged and dinged, [and] rap music thumped out from a nearby bumper car emporium."

Cohen has a spare and straightforward writing style, and the novel moves along at a fast clip. "Neptune Avenue" is a police procedural that works best as a character study of the lonely, greedy, and desperate people who resort to violence to achieve their goals. Jack is an engaging and sympathetic protagonist. Although he is smart and tenacious, when his emotions get in the way of his professional duties, he makes some questionable choices. At one point, Jack wonders plaintively "why it was so hard for people to really see each other, and why they inflicted so much absolutely unnecessary pain." Although you don't necessarily have to know and love Brooklyn to enjoy "Neptune Avenue," those who were born and/or brought up in this unique borough won't want to miss this one.

I really enjoyed this book. When I find an author of interest I begin at the beginning and move forward. This is the fourth novel by Gabriel Cohen I've read and the third Jack Leightner story and with "Neptune Avenue" Cohen has crossed a boundary from crime story to literature. This is not about flash. This is about a protagonist whom the reader can care about and characters and plot line that feels real, not created to titillate but to engage. I haven't lived in Brooklyn for twenty years but Cohen brings me back and engenders intense memories of the streets and characters of my youth while at the same time telling a story that I didn't want to end. Bravo.

"Neptune Avenue" grips you from the beginning in this page-turning novel with beautiful yet gritty descriptions of contemporary Brooklyn. The characters, as usual, are well-drawn, especially that of Detective Homicide Jack Leightner. His counterpart, Kyle Driscoll, a young, spry detective in his late twenties new to the job, is a joy to watch as he tries to deduce the whodunit with eagerness. The case is a puzzler and Cohen scatters the clues in an effective fashion for the reader to discover. The investigation is troublesome for both detectives, but with the help of Leightner, his partner, Driscoll, uses his prior knowledge to infer the killer's odd behavior. As the story unfolds, and the work becomes frustrating and, at times, life-threatening, Driscoll soon learns how demanding and gritty his chosen profession can be. Through perseverance, though, the young detective plows ahead and works around the clock to catch the person responsible for the grisly murders.

The descriptions of Coney Island and Leightner's yesterdays on Brighten Beach are vivid and amusing like glimpses of a rainbow. Cohen captures the essence of Brooklyn in beautiful imagery and well-told narration of its people. "The world of glitzy nightclubs and seaside cafes filled the avenue," he writes. He adds: "The old women looked like their doves, their men like bare-knuckle boxers who hadn't been very good at protecting their faces." The atmosphere, in its sun-drenched reverie, seems placid. "Sun-leathered old women sat on benches facing the sea and farther down the boardwalk, a bunch of men sat playing chess."

Plot takes a backseat to character in this novel, and Detective Leightner's love interest is a shady, appealing woman in Eugenia. Everything about her character is shadowed in secrecy, especially that of her husband's demise. Entwined in a cat-and-mouse game of lies, secrets and scandal, Leightner, now engrossed with the sex appeal of Eugenia, is making all the wrong choices when it comes to his work. Sex blinds the veteran detective, and soon Leightner realizes that his focus on the case is not so clear cut. Mr. Gardener, Jack's upstairs neighbor, an aging man who stares at the TV all day, brings humility to the story. Although his appearance here is brief, his character makes up for with sharp one-liners. Flashbacks of Leightner's past relationships with Michelle also lighten the mood, albeit sad. Cohen writes: "(Leightner) had done his best to remove all traces of Michelle: some lotion she had left in the bathroom cabinet, bobby pins on his dresser, the earplugs she had used when he snore..." Subtle tidbits of a character go a long way.

Cohen's attempt at bringing back a dark police procedural falls short with his newest Jack Leightner novel. If you are looking for another caper of fast-paced crime, "Neptune Avenue" supplies only half the goods. His characters run shotgun in this outing, but Cohen writes, as always, with poetic prose, making "Neptune Avenue" an emotional read. He does for Leightner what Connelly does for McEvoy.

T.B Grant
9/10/09

this is a truly wearisome series by a writer with little imagination and less style; painful reading and a wate of time.