When I sat down to write a crime novel set in Queens, New York, I did a quick look over my shoulder to see if I was stepping on anyone’s toes—or standing on their shoulders.
After all, it is impossible to write a dark mystery set in Manhattan without acknowledging the work of Lawrence Block. Or Ed McBain. Rex Stout. Chester Himes. Donald Westlake. And so on. It’s a crowded field.
But Manhattan is only one of the five boroughs.
There are scores of writers who have covered the streets of Brooklyn. Reed Farrel Coleman channels his admiration for Block with his Moe Prager series. Jimmy Breslin brought a lighter sensitivity with his send-up of Joey Gallo and fellow mobsters in The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Tim O’Mara goes for the heart with the struggles of the young in Williamsburg. Julia Dahl’s debut novel, Invisible City, explores the Hasidic Brooklyn community and makes some hair-raising revelations. And, of course, Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, a crime novel, a thriller, and a deep exploration of the wider meaning of investigation.
But of late, I am drawn to William Boyle, the author of Gravesend, which is a really cool name for a thriller, but is also a neighborhood in south Brooklyn. Boyle’s hometown. It is the first in a series of half a dozen books all centered there. Boyle reveals the city through the complicated lives of his conflicted characters. Brooklyn sucks them in when they need to escape, or draws them back when they think they’ve made their break. Disasters inevitably arise out of inconsequential actions, impossible to avoid. The books are dark, but the characters are heartbreaking—and unforgettable.
In the long ago of my college years, I often visited the Poe Cottage in the Bronx to commune with his spirit. Poe moved there to give his ailing wife a quiet environment, free from the noise and pollution of city life. Fordham was mostly farmland back then. Today, it’s fairly noisy and no cleaner than the rest of New York. Poe wrote “Annabel Lee” and other works there.
So, what about the Bronx? Haven’t all the great crime writers of New York written Bronx stories? Where did Puzo’s Michael Corleone shoot Solozzo? Mario’s Restaurant on Arthur Avenue, though they moved it to Louis Restaurant in the movie. S.S. Dine’s Philo Vance investigated a murder in the Bronx in The Dragon Murder Case. Rex Stout sent Archie to the Bronx. Jimmy Breslin placed his dark novel Forsaking All Others in the South Bronx. Lawrence Block travels uptown with both Matt Scudder and Kit Tolliver, though not in the same book. Richard Price’s The Whites is one of the darker tales I’ve read to take place there. The day I read it—and I did finish it the day I brought it home—I was sure I had just found the award winning book of the year. Crooked cops fighting a losing battle, sad crooks all too ready to sell themselves—or their sister—for another hit of heroin, surrounded by a town that doesn’t seem to care about any of them.
But my personal favorite Bronx tale is a crime novel, an adventure story, and a sad coming of age story. The Warriors by Sol Yurick, written in the mid-60’s and filmed twice, begins in Van Courtlandt Park, where gangs of mostly teenagers and young adults are brought together by a charismatic leader for a meeting of all the gangs of New York. The leader is murdered, the meeting is raided by the police, and everyone scatters. The story follows the exploits of a group of youths from a South Brooklyn gang—most Black and Latino—as they journey through the city to get back to their own turf. They travel through the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn on their way to Coney Island. The only borough they don’t hit is Staten Island. Neither movie does the book justice, but isn’t that always the way? It’s a haunting, suspenseful story with great characters and though almost sixty years old, it still captures the gritty feel for the City.
Staten Island. The forgotten borough. Though it is home to many Brooklyn ex-pats, some of whom are undoubtedly mob associates, it is mostly the semi-suburban home of New York City’s firemen, policemen, and professional city workers. On the surface at any rate, it is a quiet enclave, lacking much of the drama found everywhere else in the City.
Except. S. J. Rozan’s Absent Friends explores the death, and the mysteries of the life, of a Fire Department Captain who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Captain McCaffrey was a hero to his family and friends even before that terrible day. But sometime after his death, with the City still in shatters, a reporter suggests the man was somehow involved in a decades-old murder with connections to the mob. The story is told from multiple perspectives, revealing how the events of that day affected everyone, even in the “safe” enclave of Staten Island.
And so we come full circle to Queens. Queens gets a bad rap—even from people who live there. Archie Bunker lived in Queens. Lots of little houses. Not much happens there.
And yet…
The borough of Queens is the most ethnically diverse community on the planet. More than one hundred and thirty distinct languages are spoken there. English is number one, but over half of the people speak a second language at home. Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, and Hindi are the most popular. But the U.S. census has an abbreviated list of unique cultural backgrounds, so that my Uber driver, Mohammed from Yemen, is tossed in with folks from Japan or Thailand or Mongolia.
Pretty much name a country in the world and Queens has an outpost, complete with groceries, restaurants, religious centers, and street fairs.
And criminals.
This diversity provides excitement, color, and humor as one set of cultural norms bumps up against another. There are also gangs, organized and not-so, that control human trafficking, massage parlors, gambling, drugs, extortion (or, as it is known in certain circles, protection), and the odd bit of arson or theft. They, too, span the globe.
And there are politicians for sale, real estate developers who make fortunes bending rules to the breaking point, lawyers who prey upon the people they are supposed to be serving, and con men of all sizes, sexes, and backgrounds.
So why when I do an internet search for MYSTERY WRITERS in QUEENS NY do I get Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie (The Queen of Mystery) and not much else? With all this delicious ammunition, and a plethora of writers (do a search for WRITERS in QUEENS NY and the list scrolls on and on), why do so few crime fiction writers focus on this fertile ground?
Love the Stranger is the second book in a series that began with the award-winning Tower of Babel. I am working on the third book now.
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