Features The Big Thrill Recommends: THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK by S. J. Rozan

The Big Thrill Recommends: THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK by S. J. Rozan

Recommended by Neil Nyren

If you don’t already know S. J. Rozan, she’s the author of 15 detective novels featuring Bill Smith and Lydia Chin, several standalones and collaborations, and a thick forest of splendid short stories. They’re always entertaining, filled with grit and heart, and have won almost every crime fiction award known to man.

And if you don’t know Rozan, her new book, THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK, is a fine place to start. Lydia Chin is young, energetic, and optimistic, with a broad supporting cast drawn from her Chinese family and community. Bill Smith is older, with a well-earned wariness from experience, and has contacts all around the city. The novel is written in alternate points of view—they’re both in all of them, but one novel will be told from Bill’s perspective, the next from Lydia’s.

THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK is one of Bill’s, and it’s a thorny case. The new mayor of New York, a hard-charging woman, has hired them for something very personal, and she doesn’t want anyone else to know. Her 15-year-old son has run away. She’s in the middle of critical labor negotiations, and if word gets out, it could be a political catastrophe.

However, it soon becomes very clear that there’s much more to it than that. The boy’s disappearance may be related to the death of another teen, and maybe even a third. Killers are out looking for him, too. People in high places are hiding secrets. People in low places are hiding secrets. In desperation, Bill and Lydia turn to the true mayors of New York—the on-the-ground power brokers of each neighborhood who know everything about their turf. But even they may not be able to get Bill and Lydia to the boy in time.

It’s suspenseful, it’s twisty, it’s soaked to the core with the complexities and contradictions of New York, and it’s ridiculously good.

—Neil Nyren, Ellery Queen Award-winning Editor

The Big Thrill Recommends: THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK by S. J. Rozan