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by Con Lehane
This wry, big-hearted, noir brings 1950s New York to life from the tenements of Hell's Kitchen to the mansions of Riverdale, from Sing Sing to City Hall, with a gripping murder mystery laying bare the explosive conflicts between its big wheels, its working stiffs, its gangsters, and its dreamers.
July 1950: Mick Mulligan has just hung out his shingle as a private investigator in New York's sweaty Hell's Kitchen. A former Hollywood cartoonist whose life fell apart when he was blacklisted during a Communist witch hunt, Mick is broke, divorced, and in need of a paying gig to make his child support payments. But maybe not this gig. First off, it's impossible. Worse, it's liable to get him killed.
Last year, universally reviled cab company owner Irwin Johnson was murdered. One of his drivers, an African American Communist Party member named Harold Williams, was arrested, tried, and found guilty, despite scant evidence. Now his execution date is two weeks away. No one has come out to fight the miscarriage of justice—not the liberals, not the unions, not the Communists. New York City labor leader Duke Rogowski asks Mick to make one last effort on Harold's behalf—can he find fresh evidence that might buy Harold a stay of execution?
Lots of people might have wanted Irwin Johnson dead—anyone from his long-suffering wife to his jilted mistresses' jealous husbands to the mafiosi he was stealing business from or one of the workers he exploited—but no one has any reason to help Mick exonerate Harold Williams, and some of Irwin's former associates are happy to take a blunt object to the head of anyone asking awkward questions. Yet Mick can't abandon a potentially innocent man to the electric chair, and he agrees go to bat for this Negro Communist no one else wants anything to do with. Can he pull off a miracle?
"[A] gratifying old-school PI novel...Lehane's pacing and hardboiled dialogue are hard to beat, and he makes the jittery paranoia of the period jump off the page. Fans of James Ellroy will get a kick out of this." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Consistently more powerful in its exploration of the Red Scare than in its invocation of contemporaneous noir tropes." —Kirkus Review
"On par with the works of Kate Quinn and James Ellroy, the latest historical murder mystery from Lehane, author of the 'Bartender Brian McNulty' books, is not to be missed. It showcases a postwar United States where paranoia, cynicism, and polarizing division are alive and well, yet there is a lasting hope in the prospect of justice." —Library Journal
"A terrific period mystery. Lehane, who mystery fans probably know best for his series about librarian/amateur sleuth Raymond Ambler, makes readers feel as though they're visiting the New York City of the 1950s, and the race-against-time structure of the story allows the author to keep the plot moving at a brisk pace ... Another winner from a writer who always delivers the goods." —Booklist
This information about The Red Scare Murders was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Norman J. Faria
Con Lehane is a mystery writer, living in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Red Scare Murders (Soho Press, 2025), as well as the 42nd Street Library mysteries, featuring Raymond Ambler, curator of the library's (fictional) crime fiction collection. He's also the author of three mysteries featuring New York City bartender Brian McNulty, and has published short stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.
Over the years, he has been a college professor, union organizer and labor journalist, and has tended bar at two-dozen or so drinking establishments. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing from Columbia University School of the Arts and teaches writing at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
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