Same Difference

As mentioned below (March Violets), the plots of detective stories don't interest me as much as the dialogue, characterizations, and atmosphere. As Philip Kerr spun out a believable version of 1936 Berlin, so Martin Harris creates an alive and gritty New York City of 1976. The details are right even when they seem wrong: I did not think the NFL had playoff wild cards back then, but it did. Most important, from the first page the reader believes that what he is reading really happened. That is a basic hurdle that many of today's overpraised literary types (Franzen, Tower) never clear to my satisfaction, so it is refreshing to see it done by a writer toiling in relative obscurity.