Red Hook [Hardcover]

Gabriel Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2001

It's not the dead body--Jack Leightner has seen hundred of bodies in his tour with the NYPD. It's not the dank setting--the narrow banks along Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal. So why does the sight of the fatally stabbed young man make the detective almost faint in the canal's tangled weeds?

Jack doesn't understand why he becomes obsessed with this low-priority case, why he allows it to jeopardize his career and even his life. Especially since the investigation draws him exactly where he doesn't want to go: into the heart of Red Hook. The neighborhood is Leightner's bad dream, scene of his troubled childhood and a terrible secret.

The place also compels Jack's estranged son Ben, a young documentary filmmaker fascinated by its history. The Hook has been home to dockworkers and drug dealers, Al Capone and Joey Gallo, a giant public housing project, and one of the nation's greatest ports. Ben wants to find out why the once-thriving waterfront community has become a beautiful ruin--and why it has damaged his own family. In Gabriel Cohen's gripping first novel, this strange terrain is where Jack Leightner must seek his own redemption--and even, perhaps, the salvation of Red Hook itself. More than a crime story, Red Hook is a deep and sympathetic exploration of the mysteries of human nature, the curse and blessings of family, and one unforgettable place.

 

Red Hook is a 2002 Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, October 2001: Here's the evocative first paragraph of this accomplished debut novel, seeped in the atmosphere of the once vibrant but now desolate Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook:

The Gowanus Canal was a bilious green. Long ago, Brooklyn kids had jumped in off its narrow banks to shout and splash around, but more than a century's worth of raw sewage and pollution from the adjoining factories had rendered the water unfit for every living thing except some algae and a tiny perverse species called killifish. Its opaque depths kept many secrets, but by a stroke of luck this corpse was not one of them.

Detective Jack Leightner of Brooklyn's South Homicide Task Force is the honcho brought in to give a hand to the local precinct. It is not only his years of experience scooping out murder scenes that will be called into play. This is the neighborhood where he grew up, the son of a dockworker, and it's the place that's left a hole in his heart: "Going back to Red Hook was love shot through with pain...." Even Raymond Chandler could not have envisioned streets this mean. As a former patrol partner of Jack's once described Red Hook, it was somewhere "you didn't have to look hard to find a place to piss out in the open."

The dead man wasn't mob-connected or even a petty criminal; he was a hard- working family man with a respectable job, running the service elevator in a fancy Manhattan Eastside building. As Jack Leightner attempts to discover what brought poor Tomas Berrios to his date with a lethally wielded knife, he is forced to confront his own ghosts and to deal with his own agonizing memories of a long-ago corpse with a similar wound.

It's a familiar setup--the veteran cop with a diminished ability to understand his own emotions or to express them--but Cohen breathes fresh life into it. Atmospheric and shot through with moments of real human truth, Red Hook is a first mystery that feels like it's been around forever--and I mean that in the best sense. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

This first effort from Cohen works both as a good mystery and a literary novel. It is better than promising (may the gods take note): it is accomplished. The mystery involves a young Dominican, Tomas Berrios, found stabbed to death with two concrete blocks tied to his legs. His killers were about to drop him in the river when they were seen and fled. No one who knew Tomas has any idea why he was murdered. He was a good worker, a married man with two children. Likewise, no one knows why Det. Jack Leightner threw up when he saw the body or has become obsessed with the case. The thing is, it happened in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn where Leightner was born. It brought back bad memories of his father, his dead brother, his failed marriage and the son from whom he has been alienated ever since. The more novelistic dimension of this noirish police procedural concerns the relationship of father and son, both seeking clues to their unhappy lives in Red Hook. The son, Ben, a would-be filmmaker, is more like his father than he realizes in his inability to make lasting relationships. He has never understood his father's apparent coldness. The author draws each of these characters with sensitivity. Their poignant relationship resonates with Cohen's portrait of present-day Red Hook, once a major port, abandoned by progress but not without hope. For such a realistic work the ending is a bit too pat, the plot's loose strings neatly tied in bows. Still, this is a fine novel deserving of attention. Agent, Paul Chung.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (October 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312274580
• ISBN-13: 978-0312274580
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,371,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The mystery joins the ranks of fine literature!, October 17, 2001

By 

D. Kaplan "sleuth029" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Hook (Hardcover)

If you look for "Red Hook," you will find it listed as a "mystery." Hah! Don't believe that for one minute. Sure, there are a couple of murders and some good police investigation. However, the heart and soul of this book is about a man's search for himself...for acceptance of things past and the capacity to open his heart to the future.

Jack Leightner, a 50-year old divorced man, is a detective in a special homicide squad in Brooklyn. Jack is Brooklyn born and bred and has never had the desire to leave. I have often heard people say they like the sense of place they get from a book. If you want to spend some time in the real Brooklyn, this is your book. Mr. Cohen has captured the cultural differences of each neighborhood in that borough of New York.

When a man is found dead in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, Jack and his special homicide unit are assigned the case. The circumstances surrounding this murder are a true to mystery to him and his partner. Why would anyone want to kill a Dominican janitor in such a brutal manner? In his tireless search for the answer, Jack not only confronts his childhood which was spent in Red Hook, but the future of this area of Brooklyn whose golden days seem long past.

Jack's exploration into his darkest and deepest hidden fears bring him face to face with his relationships with both the dead and the living. He tries to come to terms with a strained relationship with his dead father and his feelings about his younger brother who died at thirteen. While doing this, he is trying to reconnect with his 20-something son and enter into his first meaningful relationship with a woman in almost 20 years.

The ending of this book is second only to that of "The 25th Hour." I couldn't turn the last 20 pages fast enough. Like the famous roller coaster ride in Coney Island, Mr. Cohen takes you on a heart-thumping ride that sends you soaring and plummeting time and again. This does not end until the very last page when you can catch your breath and get off the ride.

With the publication of, among others, "The Bottoms," The 25th Hour" and "Mystic River, the mystery novel has joined the ranks of fine literature. Add "Red Hook" to this impressive list.

Five stars does not do this book justice. Pick up a copy and see if you're not rooting for Jack.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific mystery, and, more imporantly, a great book, January 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Hook (Hardcover)

Of late I have not considered myself to be a mystery reader per se. The glut of gimmicky, alphabetized, recipe-ridden books has made me cynical, I guess. Still, dismissing the form would be preposterous. There are far too many great mysteries--whether billed as such or not--to warrant that. (Who was it who said that all great books are mysteries?)
It is axiomatic that any great book defies generalization, defies labels. RED HOOK is such a book. In the story of homicide detective Jack Leightner there are touches of the existentialism of Camus (note Jack's meditations on guilt and especially mortality), the social criticism of Sinclair Lewis, and the wry, woe-filled urban landscapes of Bernard Malamud. This being the 21st Century, the story could not help but also be filtered through the lens of the thousands of detective and true-crime stories, both in print and on the screen, that we have all had to wade through. These elements are folded in with the more literary ones to create a fascinating portrait of a man--and a place--past the curve, on the decline, but not ready to give in. More than a hunt for a killer (which it also is), RED HOOK traces an ordinary man's struggle for redemption. It just also happens to be a mystery--like all great books.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting new talent, December 17, 2001

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Red Hook (Hardcover)

For NYPD Detective Jack Leightner, the murder of a young, Dominican immigrant should have been just another case. But the execution-style killing evokes strong, unwelcome feelings and sad memories for the seasoned detective, a member of the elite Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force. And when the only possible witness is also brutally murdered, Jack starts to have serious doubts about his career, his past, his family, and sometimes his sanity. In the midst of the investigation, Jack is struggling to find common ground with his son, an aspiring documentary filmmaker.

Just as the case heats up, Jack is warned away by his superior. Has he become obsessed? Or is he just a thorough investigator?

I love picking up a first novel, with the (usually futile) hope that I'll get in on the ground floor, be one of the clever readers "in the know" who discovers a rare genius. Usually, of course, I'm disappointed. This time, however, I was delightfully surprised. Gabriel Cohen tells an absorbing tale fraught with emotion and realism. The characters are so genuine I half-expected to find their numbers in my Rolodex. The plot is fresh, yet not so outlandish as to stretch credibility. But the real shining star of his book is Cohen's sense of place. I'd never even heard of the neighborhood of Red Hook, until Cohen brought it to life for me. Now I feel like I've actually walked the cracked sidewalks. If he has more books like this in him, Cohen has a long, successful career in his future.