August 1, 2021
Back in Flatbush after his stint in the witness protection program in New Mexico, Marshall Grade gets handed a case in the worst possible way. Like Marshall, Ray Vialoux is no longer one of the NYPD's finest. With the encouragement of drug trafficker D'Anton Lewis, he's run up a $67,000 gambling debt to Frank Cifaretti, who runs book out of his Brighton Beach bagel shop and who's just sent Ray a pointed message: "MONEY BY TUESDAY, NO COPS." Is there anything Marshall can do to help? Ray asks over a diner lunch that's cut short when Ray's killed by a shotgun blast that pierces the establishment's window. Now that it's too late to help his old friend, Marshall at least wants to avenge him. But every conversation that follows is awkward. Detective Floyd Nevins, who's retiring the day the debt was due, keeps Marshall at arm's length, and Deputy Inspector Loretta Flynn treats him like a low-grade fever. Hannah Vialoux is understandably ambivalent about discussing her husband's murder with her ex-lover, and her teenage daughter, Ella, looks through him as if he weren't there. Lewis threatens to gut Marshall with a knife he displays, and Cifaretti, when Marshall finally catches up with him, quite reasonably asks why he'd cancel a debt by killing the debtor. Could the motive for Ray's execution lie in his investigation of the death of Jennifer Boyne, whose sudden, unmotivated suicide has left her parents devastated? To get to the bottom of the mystery, Marshall must slog awkwardly through a thicket of felonies, one perp at a time. His return to his home turf makes this the least distinctive of the appealing hero's three cases to date.
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August 30, 2021
At the start of Sanders’s underwhelming third mystery featuring New York PI Marshall Grade (after 2017’s Marshall’s Law), Marshall meets Ray Vialoux, a former NYPD narcotics detective, in an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, where Vialoux confides he’s amassed a sizable gambling debt that’s being called in by capo Frank Cifaretti. The deadline for payment in full is in five days. Vialoux hopes Marshall, who once worked undercover to infiltrate the Mafia, can help, but their conversation’s interrupted when someone fatally shoots Vialoux through the restaurant window. The investigating officers view Marshall with suspicion, especially after he discloses a past romantic relationship with Vialoux‘s widow. The gumshoe digs into possible alternate suspects for the killing, as Cifaretti had no reason to murder Vialoux before the deadline passed. Predictable violence follows before a yawn-worthy reveal. Cumbersome prose (“his MetroCard was two days from expiry, and for reasons inchoate but nonetheless compelling, he felt the need to maximize its usage during the final forty-eight hours of validity”) is another minus. There are plenty of better gritty and grim PI mysteries set in contemporary New York. Agent: David Hale Smith, InkWell Management.
October 15, 2021
New York private investigator Marshall Grade runs into someone he used to work with at the NYPD. Ray Vialoux has a problem: he's seriously in debt to some nasty people. He asks Marshall to help him extract himself from the situation, but Marshall doesn't have a whole lot of time to decide before the man is gunned down in front of him. Now Marshall feels like he's obligated to track down the killers and extract some form of justice. The third Marshall Grade novel (following Marshall's Law, 2017) is, like its predecessors, very well crafted. The lead character is a man with a deep past; the more we learn about him, the more we like him. The story is convoluted and filled with revelations--the truth behind Vialoux's murder is much more chilling than it first appears to be--and Sanders does an excellent job of keeping Marshall and the reader on their toes. A very satisfying crime novel.
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