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Note: For the "origin story" of the nameless hero of this
novel (and his "girl Friday" for that matter) see Dan Leissner's
earlier The Big Farewell. New
York 1929, the Wall Street Crash of the Black Tuesday has pretty
much just hit the city, and many bankers, traders, nouveaux riches and
even people coming from old money suddenly found themselves hitting rock
bottom pretty much overnight - to a degree where suicide became a citywide
pastime. Our hero though never had much and manages to churn out a decent
living as a private eye, helped by his girlfriend and girl Friday - who
just happens to be a ghost. And since she's a ghost it shouldn't come as a
surprise that some of our hero's clients are also ghosts, like young
Benita, who committed suicide after her mother's murder, Vivian Gordon.
Now when alive, Vivian, a former showgirl turned prostitute, ran a
prostitution ring, and one that was very high class and thus failed to
attract the authorities' attention - but sex was really only a sideline in
her business, her actual game was blackmail, meaning she used her girls'
charms to get as much damning info out of their clients to turn the
knowledge against them. For years her business was booming - well, until
her murder that is. Our hero investigates, and soon gets hold of
Vivian's "black book", where he finds all her clients/victims -
and finds himself shocked at how many people might have legitimate reasons
to want her dead. What's worse even is that many of the names in the black
book belong to prominent members of Tammany Hall, back then pretty
much New York's shadow gouvernment - an organisation probably too big to
handle for a single private eye. And yet, our hero follows lead after
lead, and things seem to go somewhere as many of those he suspected turn
up dead, creating a bigger and bigger picture. And yet, the bigger the
picture, the more difficult it gets to find out the truth - and maybe the
truth might be found somewhere completely else ... Above all,
this novel shows writer Dan Leissner's remarkable growth as an author:
When he started out approximately 15 years ago, his books - most
prominently probably the Cool
Cat series - were hommages to yesteryear's pulp literature and
even more so pulp cinema, books that sure were highly enjoyable, but also
books never intended to do anything more than entertain. Now sure, Guilty
City - just like The Big Farewell
before it - still borrows heavily from hardboiled crime literature of the
1920s and 30s, but moves away from the hommage bandwagon to tell a serious
story in front of a well-researched historical backdrop, and as
far-fetched the supernatural elements might seem on first sight, they're
well integrated into the narration and actively add to the proceedings
rather than detract from them. And thanks to a very vivid writing style, Guilty
City has also turned out to be a regular page turner, making this one
fine read indeed. If this has gotten you at all interested, Guilty
City can be obtained, as e-book or paperback, from the following:
UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B28D5K19
USA:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B28D5K19
Germany:
https://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B28D5K19
...
and from pretty much all Amazons worldwide J
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