BAD MEMORIES WE DON'T WANT TO FORGET: REED FARREL COLEMAN'S BLIND TO MIDNIGHT

For the many years I've known Reed Farrel Coleman, he would occasionally mention a true unsolved crime he wanted to utilize in his fiction. Over a decade he worked at it, through trial and error. I couldn't wait to see what he would do with it, since he was the perfect author to mine the themes and emotions that could come from it. He found a way to apply it in his latest novel to to feature Nick Ryan, his NYPD intel cop who also operates in the city's shadows as a fixer for the powers that be. Not only did Reed meet my expectations, the book, Blind To Midnight, proves the long gestation period was perfect for the storytelling.

Ryan ends up dealing with three cases in the novel. His mysterious handler, Joe, puts him on a job in helping out the son of the Lansdales, an influential couple, with a group of hitters after him. His involvement gets him tangled up in the family, particularly with Mrs, Lansdale. Then it gets personal when Terry Angelo, a cop friend of his father Nick's known since he was a kid, is found murdered with his wife. Nick gets Joe to pull strings that put him on the crime scene. The investigation gets more personal when he discovers a former lover is the lead detective. All this is tied to a cold case that occured on September Eleventh when a Serbian immigrant was killed in the subway, It was the only murder to take place in New York outside of the Twin Towers that day.

Reed takes the form of a men's action adventure series book and applies his humanist voice to it. He gives us an interesting application of the close third person point of view, where we stick with Ryan, a cool customer, who on the surface appears to be more about mind than heart, but the access he gives us to that mind shows it in battle it has with that other part of him. Even in the action scenes, we follow his process to a situation than just his reactions. This is especially evident n a car chase that would have made William Friedkin envious, putting the reader in the shotgun seat of Ryan's GTO. Unlike most heroes of his ilk, his cold demeanor doesn't come from his experience as a soldier and cop having burned the emotions out of him, but as something he uses as a wall to keep the emotions they have created at bay.

This point of view gives us a unique and believable take on 9/11. As Ryan looks into the cold case, learning it was not the hate crime many suspected, the murder like the other tragedy connected to it has grown more ethereal in the collective memory as a generation of time has passed. It has become a bad day we struggle out of duty to remember. It would be interesting to read this book after,S.J. Rozan's Absent Friends which views the state of the city two months after the towers fell.

Blind To Midnight works on two different levels. On the surface, it delivers an exciting, gritty New York thriller with cinematic action and a hero cut from the Steve McQueen clothe. However, it's literary underpinnings provide a melancholy examination of the city and its ghosts it would not feel right about exorcising. Now matter how cool the protagonist, Reed Farrel Coleman will reach the warm beating heart.