Private Investigators

“You know what a witch hunt is? It’s when a big lie declaring someone anathema to the prevailing orthodoxy gets a head of steam…,” explains narrator Mick Mulligan. It’s July 1950, and the country is in the grips of anti-communist “Red Scare” fever. Blacklisted from his job as a Disney cartoonist, Mick is back in New York, divorced, broke, and starting as a private detective to pay child support. But his first case may prove impossible to solve. A year and half earlier, Irwin Johnson, a despised cab company owner, was shot to death in his garage office. Evidence pointed to Black cab driver and Communist Party member Harold Williams, who had led a wildcat strike against Johnson’s company a month before the murder. Tried and convicted, Harold sits in Sing Sing prison, awaiting execution on August 4. Now, labor leader Duke Rogowski wants Mick to find new evidence to exonerate Harold. The problem is that Mick only has 15 days. In the best hardboiled noir tradition, our gumshoe doggedly pursues clues and reluctant witnesses like sexy femme fatale widow Eva Johnson (think Lana Turner) while fending off Mob goons named Moose. If Lehane’s (Murder at the College Library) red-herring plot twists don’t always make sense, his gritty portrait of 1950s New York rings true. While there is only one actual murder, the novel vividly depicts the McCarthyism that destroyed so many lives. A treat for noir and historical mystery fans.

What the world needs now is more queer historical mysteries, and thankfully Lev AC Rosen is doing a wonderful job of delivering exactly that. The fourth, and best, in the series (Lavender House, The Bell in the Fog, Rough Pages) follows Evander “Andy” Mills, an ex-cop and current private eye—it’s the early 1950s—who takes on a case that forces him to leave his beloved San Francisco for Los Angeles. Andy is hired by members of the Mattachine Society, an early gay-rights organization, to find several of their members who have gone missing. Locating men, and one woman, who are already super low-key, keep their sexual identity under wraps, and are terrified of the cops, makes for some especially challenging detective work. Fortunately, Andy is able to track down some great leads, from a gay biker club to a lesbian pharmacist (a useful career in drug-addled Hollywood). But most shocking of all, Andy sort-of reunites with his mother—although that’s all you’ll hear from me on that. This book moves nice and fast, stays completely on point, and provides an ongoing romance that is totally delightful. Book group alert!