Title: The Mobster's LamentAuthor: Ray Celestin
Series: City Blues Quartet #3
Published by: Pan Macmillan on Jun. 1, 2020
Genres: Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 576
Format: Paperback
Source: Publishers Group Canada
Book Rating: 10/10
Award-winning author Ray Celestin’s The Mobster’s Lament is both a gripping crime novel and a vivid, panoramic portrait of 1940s New York as the mob rises to the height of its powers.
From the acclaimed author of The Axeman’s Jazz and Dead Man’s Blues, Ray Celestin’s gripping third book follows a gangster’s last chance to escape the clutches of New York’s mafia families, but as a blizzard descends on NYC, a ruthless serial killer is tracking his every move.
New York, 1947. Mob fixer Gabriel Leveson’s plans to flee the city are put on hold when he is tasked with tracking down stolen mob money by ‘the boss of all bosses,’ Frank Costello. But while he’s busy looking, he doesn’t notice who’s watching him.
Meanwhile, Private Investigator Ida Young and her old partner, Michael Talbot, must prove the innocence of Talbot’s son Tom, who has been accused of the brutal murders of four people in a Harlem flophouse. With all the evidence pointing towards him, their only chance of exoneration is to find the killer themselves.
Whilst across town, Ida’s childhood friend, Louis Armstrong, is on the brink of bankruptcy, when a promoter approaches him with a strange offer to reignite his career.
Both a gripping neo-noir crime novel and a vivid, panoramic portrait of New York, The Mobster’s Lament takes you to the heart of a city where the Mob has risen to the height of its powers.
Review:
Gritty, atmospheric, and action-packed!
The Mobster’s Lament is a pacey, enthralling thriller set in New York City in the late 1940s when America was still recovering from war, politicians were as dirty as they come, Italian gangsters were running the streets, the Copacabana nightclub was the place to see and be seen, and Jazz was still dominating the airwaves.
The prose is crisp and clear. The characters are focused, driven, and multilayered. And the plot is a fast-paced, riveting tale full of twists, turns, action, intrigue, power, corruption, deduction, duplicity, violence, and murder.
Overall, The Mobster’s Lament is another sinister, compelling, exceptionally absorbing, gangster tale by Celestin that does a fantastic job of blending real-life historical figures, insightful information, and gripping fiction into an unputdownable story.
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Thank you to PGC Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
About Ray Celestin
Ray Celestin is a novelist and screenwriter based in London. His debut novel, The Axeman’s Jazz, won the CWA New Blood Dagger for best debut crime novel of the year, and was featured on numerous ‘Books of the Year’ lists. His follow-up, Dead Man’s Blues, won the Historia Historical Thriller of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for a number of other awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. The novels are part of a series – ‘The City Blues Quartet’ – which charts the twin histories of jazz and the mob through the middle 50 years of the twentieth century. The Mobster’s Lament is the third instalment in this series.