Blind to Midnight by Reed Farrel Coleman

Published by Blackstone Publishing on August 13, 2024

Nick Ryan (at least his name isn’t Jake or Jack) is a tough guy. Tough Guy fiction is populated by one dimensional characters, the dimension being toughness. That makes them boring. No character in fiction is more tedious than a self-righteous cop. Nick is a self-righteous Tough Guy cop, meaning he’s both boring and tedious.

Ryan has the usual binary view of the world that characterizes fictional Tough Guys, few of whom have room in their brains for nuanced thought. He is proud of his enhanced ability to discern the difference between right and wrong (an ability that evolved from his military service, where “right” meant “what superior officers tell me to do” and “wrong” meant “whatever the enemy is doing”). He is untroubled by his inability to perceive any gray area between right and wrong. Nick also prides himself on not making moral judgments, as if right and wrong are not abstract, contextualized judgments. Instead of moral judgments, Nick makes “professional assessments.” Much less messy than worrying about right and wrong, not that he needs to worry because he always knows what is right and what is wrong. Lucky guy.

Tough Guy fiction is all about establishing the Tough Guy’s credentials. Nick says “tough isn’t about having a gun. Tough is how you handle having one stuck in your face.” He tells this to a wealthy woman who wants to sleep with him despite his banal dialog (Nick understands that women can’t resist “real men”) but Nick can say no to her because he knows another woman is just around the corner. Such are the benefits of being a Tough Guy in Thrillerworld.

To prove his toughness, Nick fights several armed men at a time without pulling a weapon. And while tough isn’t about having a gun, Nick usually has at least two within reach and doesn’t hesitate to kill bad guys with them. He feels sad about it (sort of), but never regrets killing because regret, like hope, gets you nowhere. Nick assures us that he has feelings; he just doesn’t “surrender to them.” Of course not, because Tough Guys can’t let their feels get in the way of their toughs. When Nick explains that he has separated himself from his daughter to protect her from all the bad guys he attracts, he’s making it clear that his feelings consist of self-love and little else. I mean, the dude could just move to a different state with her and stop killing people, but that wouldn't be the Tough Guy thing to do.

Nick is a detective in NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau. He’s also the city’s “shadow watchman.” He isn’t quite Batman, although his masters have given him a fast car and a bunch of tech, everything short of a mask and a Batarang. When Nick isn’t performing his regular duties, he works as a “fixer,” solving the city’s problems in exchange for unprecedent access to resources. While Nick has little contact with the people who control him, he prides himself on his independence, which he furthers by blackmailing his immediate superior so he can do things the say he wants to do them — the Tough Guy Way.

Nick’s former partner planted blood evidence that he hoped would lead to the conviction of a child killer. The cop’s attempt to defraud the court was exposed and the cop “ate his gun” when the killer went free. Instead of heeding the obvious lesson that cops shouldn’t plant fake evidence, Nick decided to execute the child killer. After all, if Nick thinks the perp is guilty, why bother to give the guy a fair trial? Nick might think he knows the difference between right and wrong, but he has a warped sense of justice.

Having established that Nick is boring and indistinguishable from dozens of other Tough Guy protagonists, let’s take a look at the plot. Nick is working undercover because he is truly gifted at developing the convincing stench of a homeless person. He’s going after Shea Flannery, the president of the laborer’s union. His masters want to prove that Flannery is dirty, even if Nick has to supply the dirt. The fact that Nick didn’t quit on the spot after receiving that order is evidence of Nick’s inability to make moral judgments, not to mention an impaired sense of the difference between right and wrong.

Nick rescues a boy from a likely beating. The boy’s mother is Victoria Lansdale, the rich woman who wants to shag Nick. “Wealthy women smelled different,” Nick tells us in a moment of great insight. Thugs later use mild violence to deliver a message to Victoria’s husband: “Tell him the bill is long overdue.” Nick’s involvement in Lansdale drama is part of the story.

Nick’s dad is a retired cop. He testified against corrupt cops and is now unwelcome in their company. His dad’s best friend, Tony Angelo, also a retired cop, is murdered. Nick decides that investigating Flannery is less important than solving Angelo’s murder. Tough guys never follow orders. Nick’s investigation of Tony’s death is another part of the story. So is the Flannery plot thread.

Nick’s beloved independence allows him to investigate the murder of Vlado Markovic, who was supposedly killed in New York City on 9/11. The official conclusion is that Markovic was mistaken for an Arab and was killed in a hate crime. Not true, but Reed Farrel Coleman ties Markovic’s unlikely murder to more plausible plot threads.

The plot is no worse, and in some respects more clever, than is traditional for Tough Guy novels. Unfortunately, Nick is just another Tough Guy. Coleman gives the reader no reason to care about what happens to him. Dialog is uninspired. So are sentences like “He had somewhere to do and something to do.” I have nowhere to go and some other book to read. I hope the next one is more original than Blind to Midnight.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Colorblind by Reed Farrel Coleman

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on September 11, 2018

The Robert B. Parker factory produced Colorblind (excuse me, Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind). The seventeenth Jesse Stone novel was assembled by Reed Farrel Coleman, who took over the factory job from Michael Brandman. Parker managed to write nine Jesse Stone books before he died and the factory took over. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with factory novels (I like the Spenser novels that Ace Atkins writes), but wouldn’t it be nice to see Coleman’s name in a font that is as large as Parker’s?

The victim of the first murder in Paradise after Stone became Chief of Police was a woman. The word “slut” was written on her body. Now, in a town near Paradise, another murder has followed that pattern, except that the victim is black. Early chapters that focus on a white supremacist neo-Nazi create the impression that the latest murder, at least, is racially motivated.

An outbreak of attacks on interracial couples also has Stone worried about trouble in Paradise, as well as flyers from the “Saviors of Society” that bash liberals, gays, nonwhites, feminists, atheists, and people who want to regulate guns. A character called the Colonel, the leader of the Saviors, tries to make America great again by causing trouble for Stone and his African-American officer, Alisha Davis, who is accused of shooting an unarmed suspect. The resolution of the Davis plot line is beyond implausible.

I appreciate the sentiment underlying the novel’s depiction of right-wing lunatics, but Coleman is so heavy-handed in that portrayal that it didn’t quite ring true. As villains go, the Colonel is completely over the top.

Jesse’s battle with alcoholism and his reliance on AA to resist using alcohol as a stress reliever is a fairly common device to add interest to characters in cop novels. Unfortunately, Jesse’s rather ordinary demons are not enough to make him compelling. Jesse was edgy in his original conception; now he's just dull. The frequent references to his ability to stay strong and avoid the bottle come across as a substitute for deeper character development, as is the portrayal of Jesse as a stalwart, incorruptible, by-the-book cop (unless he’s beating someone up because he decides they deserve it).

There’s a difference between being admirable and interesting, and Jesse is too boring to be interesting. The attempt to humanize him by changing his personal life at the novel’s end feels forced. The supporting characters are more like shadows than people; Coleman makes no serious effort to give them depth.

The story moves quickly, thanks to Coleman’s dialog-heavy writing style. The plot lacks surprises and the heroic ending is a bit silly. I have no strong feelings, positive or negative, about Colorblind. I’m recommending it primarily to fans of the series, but there are so many thrillers that are better than this one, I can’t recommend it to readers who are looking for something special, or even something that’s above average.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

What You Break by Reed Farrel Coleman

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on February 7, 2017

The prolific Reed Farrell Coleman has developed or contributed to six series of novels. What You Break is the second installment of the Gus Murphy series. Enough background from Where It Hurts appears in What You Break to make it easily read as a standalone book.

Gus is a retired cop who works hotel security in Suffolk County, New York, which sometimes requires him to drive a hotel shuttle. The doorman, Gus’ good friend Slava Podalak, has a mysterious past. Gus is trying to rebuild his life after his son’s death. He regrets the end of his marriage but he knows better than to pretend he can save it.

Gus has a history with a priest who saved his life by killing someone. The priest introduces Gus to a wealthy fellow named Micah Spears, whose granddaughter, Linh Trang Spears, has been murdered. The police arrested the murderer but they don’t understand his motive. Spears wants Gus to find out why the crime was committed.

Quickly enough, Gus encounters a professional hit man, gets beaten up by a big guy, gets beaten up by a cop, dodges Russians who are trying to find Slava, is chased by thugs in a car, and has a conflict with his girlfriend. It’s a dangerous life Gus leads, although his tour of Long Island pizza joints might make it bearable.

Gus eventually decides that he won’t learn anything until he learns more about Micah Spears, who turns out to be at least as mysterious as Slava. Coleman makes a big deal out of the contrast between Slava, who did something bad and carries enormous guilt, and Spears, who did something bad and feels no remorse. Both of the characters seem contrived, created expressly for the purpose of demonstrating that contrast, but neither of them has much substance.

Gus reminds us about once every three pages that his son died and that the death changed him. That’s a fine characterization, but I got it the first time. By the tenth time, I was ready for Gus to find something else to talk about. Unfortunately, Gus is too dull to talk about anything interesting. The other main character, a former priest who lost his faith, is a standard stereotype too often found in crime fiction to be interesting.

The plot is plausible and reasonably entertaining. I liked the ending. The novel’s merits outweigh its shortcomings but this certainly isn’t Coleman’s best work.

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