What We’re Reading

In This Rain | S. J. Rozan

In another break from her Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery series, Rozan has chosen the last big parcel of NYC owned land as the focus of her latest mystery. Three Star is developing a Bronx project (Mott Haven) to prove it has the capacity to tackle the last city owned parcel in the Bronx. Garden Walls, a community organization comprised of black businessmen, bankers and clergy, wants the project thrown their way rather than be given to rich white men seeking to gentrify Harlem at the expense of its black residents.

A series of accidents, including the death of a black woman, at Mott Haven result in the Department of Investigations officer Ann Montgomery being assigned to the case. Montgomery’s partner (Joe Cole) had been convicted 3 years earlier of investigative fraud, is now out on parole and living upstate. Montgomery has a lifelong antipathy to devloper Walter Glybenthal, the only publicly known partner in Three Star.

The narrative travels back and forth between Harlem, Manhatten and upstate New York, following Ann in her investigation. Insurance fraud, murder, political corruption, rogue law enforcement are all elements of a plot that gathers steam as the layers of deceit unfold.

Montgomery suffers from the willfulness of most female investigators in pursuit of their prey, though I only once found myself wanting to shake her for going off on her own - disregarding the other players helping to trap her villain. Justice of a kind is done and the ending holds a surprise. Rozan writes a good story, and gardens provide a nice background for the good guys.

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The In This Rain | S. J. Rozan by plnkh, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 9:08 am by plnkh and is filed under Book Review. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: adult fiction, mystery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.