Blood Count - Softcover

Reggie Nadelson, journalist and film-maker, is the author of nine novels featuring the New York detective Artie Cohen. Her non-fiction book about the singer Dean Reed, Comrade Rockstar, is being filmed by Tom Hanks and Dreamworks. She divides her time between London and New York.

Typically, Nadelson’s series hero, Russian immigrant and NYPD detective Artie Cohen, careens around the city at breakneck pace or, as in Londongrad (2009), jets across the ocean, often to Russia, in search of answers to whatever case is bedeviling him. Cohen is bedeviled this time, too, but there is very little movement. The action takes place almost entirely within the walls of a Harlem apartment building, where Cohen’s former girlfriend, Lily, now lives and where her Russian neighbor, Marianna, has died under suspicious circumstances. Fearing that she might be implicated in the death, Lily calls Artie for help. What he finds in the building is a cross section of the new Harlem—young professionals living alongside older, affluent African Americans, all with agendas about the future of the building. Backstories bring together the concerns of the younger residents with a world Artie knows well—that of Russian immigrants, also on the make, with many conflicted over the ideals of new and old Russia, as the black characters are over new and old Harlem. Although not as action-oriented as earlier installments in the series, Nadelson’s latest offers a fascinating look at culture change in New York’s melting pot. --Bill Ott