Disturbed earth - Reggie Nadelson

Reggie Nadelson's new Artie Cohen mystery begins when a jogger finds a child's clothes drenched in blood and buried in the half frozen earth near Brighton Beach - the Atlantic coast of Brooklyn. When another child goes missing, all the city's fears and insecurities, still reeling from 9/11, and with barricades and barriers and soldiers with AKs still part of the domestic landscape, are brought to the surface. Drawn into the case and reeled back in by Brooklyn's Russian community, his own people, Artie becomes personally involved-As powerful a presence as Edinburgh for Ian Rankin, here is New York as a city of islands and rivers, of bridges and tunnels, as Artie travels between downtown Manhattan, still traumatized by the loss of the Twin Towers, and Brooklyn's Long Island seafronts: Brighton Beach, all boardwalk, beach and Russians; Coney Island with its wrecked amusement park; Sheepshead Bay with its inlets and fishing boats. A gripping mystery and a love-song to a side of New York we really see, Reggie Nadelson and Artie Cohen are at their wise-cracking best.