Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1952, traumatized WWII vet Benjamin Gold, the hero of Cohen's triumphant debut, is handling routine cases as a struggling gumshoe. Before the war, Gold worked as a lawyer at a white-shoe Cleveland law firm with connections to his wife's wealthy family, the Forsythes. When he was put into a psychiatric ward after the war, he was fired and his wife divorced him. Now he's consulted by Judith Sorin, whose father, Maury, was known as the local Clarence Darrow before he was gunned down in a stickup by a drug addict who was himself fatally shot soon afterward by an off-duty cop. Though the authorities consider Maury's murder solved, his daughter is convinced he was deliberately targeted for death by Gold's former in-laws. Judith believes her father was retained by someone with dirt on the Forsythes and was murdered as a result. Gold agrees to investigate, despite the lack of solid leads, and soon gets in over his head. The crisp prose and rich characterizations elevate a standard hard-boiled plotline. Fans of classic PI novels will hope for more from Cohen. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
In Cohen's debut detective novel, a down-on-his-luck private investigator takes on his former in-laws. It's 1952 in Cleveland, and Benjamin Gold has had a rough decade. Once a talented attorney, he was traumatized by his service in World War II and a subsequent stay in a psychiatric ward. Afterward, his law firm let him go, and then his wife left him. Forced to work as a private investigator, he spends much of his time at the bottom of a bottle. Then, one day, a beautiful woman walks into his office: Judith Sorin, the daughter of the legendary lawyer to the downtrodden Maury Sorin. Maury was recently shot dead in what was ruled a routine robbery, but Judith suspects that it was actually an assassination. What's more, she thinks that the wealthy Forsythe family--Gold's ex-in-laws--ordered the hit. To get to the bottom of what happened, Gold will have to dig up more information on a Forsythe-related case that Maury was working on. Gold jumps at the chance to get back at the family that shunned him because of his Jewish heritage, but to do so, he'll have to wade through a shady underworld in which industry, politics, the law, and the street intertwine. Can Gold keep it together and solve the case? Cohen's curt, rapid prose, as narrated by Gold, fits squarely within the hard-boiled tradition. For example, at one point, Gold wonders why the powerful family hasn't yet tried to "bump [him] off": "Then again, there could've been a gunman waiting for me that very moment outside the building. The thought got the sweat glands pumping." The distinct midcentury Cleveland setting and Gold's memories of liberating the Ebensee concentration camp give the novel a memorable sense of gravity throughout. The plot remains true to private-eye genre tropes, but Cohen introduces enough surprises and human touches to keep the reader invested in how it all ends up. An engrossing and well-crafted riff on the tough-guy PI novel. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
