The Red Scare Murders

Lehane (Murder at the College Library) delivers a gratifying old-school PI novel set in the thick of the McCarthy era. WWII veteran Mick Mulligan had it all—a successful career as a Hollywood cartoonist, a comfortable salary, a lovely family—until he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After losing his job and his wife, Mick fled to New York City and reinvented himself as a private investigator. His latest case lands him in a simmering cauldron of social unrest that could boil over at any moment. A year ago, Black cabbie and Communist Party member Harold Williams was convicted of murdering wealthy white taxi company owner Irwin Johnson. Harold is scheduled to be executed in just two weeks, but labor leader Duke Rogowski hires Mick to look into the case with hopes that he might exonerate Williams. A skeptical Mick digs in, soon discovering that the list of Harold’s enemies is long, and coming around to the idea that the cabbie may, in fact, be a patsy. Lehane’s pacing and hardboiled dialogue are hard to beat, and he makes the jittery paranoia of the period jump off the page. Fans of James Ellroy will get a kick out of this. Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (Nov.)