A floating coffin draws Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner into a murder investigation in hidden parts of New York Harbor and the old Brooklyn Navy Yard in this second novel in Edgar Award nominee Gabriel Cohen’s acclaimed crime seriesAt a bed and breakfast in upstate New York, Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner is doing his best to propose to his girlfriend. When the hotel staff loses the engagement ring, romance is put on hold and Leightner returns to Brooklyn to tangle once more with death. A boy has been found floating by the Red Hook pier in a handmade coffin that suggests a burial at sea. But when a second victim turns up, Leightner senses a vile pattern.The last time he worked Red Hook, the old waterfront was a ghost town. Now, gentrification is reshaping the quiet cobblestoned streets, with big-box stores and condos being built where longshoremen once lived, worked, loved, and died. But even in this shiny new Brooklyn, Leightner knows, there are corners where darkness reigns.From Publishers WeeklyDeath and recovery consume Det. Jack Leightner in his second appearance and validate the praise Cohen received for Red Hook (2001). Winter is settling over New York harbor and a small coffin containing the body of a boy floats off a Red Hook pier. The box was assembled without nails and the corpse treated carefully. But by whom? Jack is temporarily assigned to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, once the hub of a thriving shipping industry, now decrepit but on the brink of gentrification. Tommy Balfa, the other officer on the case, leaves Jack alone except for favors he can call in. Oddly, Jack welcomes this challenge as a distraction from personal problems such as his repeated failure to propose to his magnificent girlfriend, even though working in Red Hook brings up his guilt over his brother's death when they were kids on the streets. Cohen offers not just a mystery but a satisfying elegy for vanished ways of life. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review“[A] dark, lustrous police procedural . . . Brilliant . . . At a time when some of the older masterful cop writers, like Ed McBain, are dying or just fading away, Cohen’s appearance comes as a relief and pleasure.” —The Washington Post“Not just a mystery but a satisfying elegy for vanished ways of life.” —Publishers Weekly“Intricate, atmospheric, funny, and enthralling. An impressive crime novel from a powerful, promising writer.” —George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener“A story that engages the reader from the first page, and a gripping tale of mystery and suspense. You will be treated to a behind-the-scenes look at a world known only to the New York detective.” —John Cornicello, lt. commander, NYPD’s Brooklyn North Homicide Squad

In this fourth novel in Edgar Award nominee Gabriel Cohen’s acclaimed crime series, Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner reopens the case of his brother’s death four decades laterCutting class, young Jack Leightner and his brother, Petey, are playing near the Brooklyn waterfront when they find a hidden case of Scotch. They are carrying it home when two teenagers from outside the neighborhood stop them and demand they hand over the booze. Jack refuses, and one of the muggers draws a knife, changing Jack’s life forever.Forty years later, now a veteran of the elite Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force, Leightner still has not come to grips with that fateful day in Red Hook. He is making breakfast one morning when a man appears on his doorstep and introduces himself as Petey’s killer. Leightner could arrest him, but the man makes him a deal: Let me go and I’ll tell you the real reason I stabbed your brother.As Leightner digs into the hidden causes of his family tragedy, he finds his brother’s murder was about much more than a case of Scotch.From Publishers WeeklyA family tragedy comes back to haunt Jack Leightner in Cohen's less than inspired fourth crime novel featuring the Brooklyn homicide detective (after 2009's Neptune Avenue). In 1965, Jack watched as his 13-year-old brother, Petey, was stabbed to death by an older black teenager, who had demanded that they hand over a case of liquor. Four decades later, the killer, Darnel Teague Jr., who was never caught, shows up at Leightner's front door and confesses to the crime as part of his recovery from alcohol abuse. Darnel further upends the policeman's world by adding that an Italian-American man, a stranger whose name Darnel never learned, hired him to teach the Leightner brothers a lesson. A fresh case—a bludgeoning murder in a deli apparently committed by a terrorist—distracts Jack from trying to identify the man out to get him and Petey back in '65. The truth behind the fatal mugging may strike some readers as a letdown. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review“In a spellbinding return, Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner investigates a murder in the family. . . . Deftly plotted and convincingly written. Cohen once more does the genre proud.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Fast action and multiple plot lines make this fourth Jack Leightner mystery . . . an engrossing read, but don’t get too comfortable because Cohen is a master at misdirection. . . . Cohen captures Brooklyn and its people in this tale of then and now.” —Library Journal“At a time when some of the older masterful cop writers, like Ed McBain, are dying or just fading away, Cohen’s appearance comes as a relief and pleasure.” —The Washington Post

In this third novel in Gabriel Cohen’s Edgar Award–nominated Jack Leightner crime series, the Brooklyn homicide detective investigates the serial killing of prostitutes in Crown Heights and the murder of a friend who ran afoul of Russian gangsters in Brighton Beach Jack Leightner’s new partner is a rookie homicide detective, scared by death but ready to learn. His first case is a gruesome one: a strangled prostitute, hung from her neck in an imitation of suicide and left to fester for days in the summer heat. Nearly overcome, the rookie asks Leightner how he keeps himself from getting emotionally involved with the victims. If we got emotional or took it personally, says Leightner, “there’s no way we could do the job.” But when an old Russian friend in Brighton Beach is murdered, Leightner takes it very personally. Organized crime is stifling this old-world enclave, and his friend made the mistake of getting in the way. Just as dangerous as these thugs is Leightner’s attraction to his friend’s widow, the beautiful Eugenia, whose temptations may make Jack break his cardinal rule about not getting personally involved.