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In the third of this engaging series by Triss Stein, graduate student and single mom Erica Donato somehow finds herself in the middle of two mysteries: one in the present-day and one from the 1930s. This series always shows us a slice of Brooklyn that may not be well known; in this novel, Stein takes us on a tour through Brownsville, an area that has remained untouched by the gentrification elsewhere in Brooklyn, including Donato's trendy Park Slope neighborhood.
Though it's not the best of areas, Donato ventures into Brownsville for her dissertation on changing Brooklyn neighborhoods. While Brownsville's racial and ethnic makeup has changed, it's always been a violent place—with mob ties in the 1930s and gangs in the present day.
At a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library there, she meets Savanna, a high school senior with plans to attend Wellesley. When Savanna is badly beaten and left comatose, Donato is drawn to the case. She believes several gang members, with whom she had a scary encounter, may be connected to the girl's beating. She becomes even more involved when she realizes she has met Savanna's mother before - Zora, an outspoken woman who is also a single mother. Donato's own daughter, 15-year-old Chris, also gets into the act, following social media posts that even the police haven't unearthed. When another teenager is beaten, and killed, Donato is pulled even deeper into the dangerous investigation.
In the meantime, Donato has been interviewing two 91-year-old women for her dissertation. From the 1930s era of Brownsville, they provide rich stories. One of them, Lillian Kravitz, asks Erica to keep an eye out for her brother's name in any of Donato's research. In 1936, when he was 22 and Lillian was 10, her brother left for a union meeting and never showed up, mysteriously disappearing. Donato, in her research, does come across the brother's name - and there seems to be a tie to Murder Inc., the organized crime groups of the era. Her interest piqued, she begins to dig deeper.
Stein neatly interweaves these two story lines, balancing wonderful historical detail with a look at an often overlooked Brooklyn neighborhood. The only quibble with this book is the editing. There were dozens of small errors, such as missing periods, apostrophes that went in the wrong direction, and dropped words. These were distractions for this reviewer. However, the story was so strong that it kept me up reading late into the night.
§ Lourdes Venard is an independent editor who divides her time between New York and Maui.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, December 2015
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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