TITLE: Manhattan Is My Beat
The Rune Series #1
My Review
Rune is a bit of an oddball, sporting purple hair and packing lots of snark. Working at the video store isn’t usually exciting, but when she stumbles into the scene of a murder, she can’t let it go. The old man was a friend of hers and she’s sure that the video he kept renting over and over again ties into a crime committed many years ago. She dives head first into danger to avenge her friend.
Being a fan of Deaver’s darker, brooding thrillers like The Bone Collector, this lighter mystery caught me by surprise. Not that Deaver doesn’t throw in his usual curve balls to keep you off balance so the mystery eludes you til the end.
And I couldn’t have asked for a more delightful character than Rune. For a twenty-year-old, she’s fiercely independent and definitely not a wall flower. Throw in some more quirky people that join her in her endeavors and you get the fun character driven part of the story.
While this felt a bit different than his other writing, being an earlier work, I was glad I listened to it. And now I want to get to the rest of the series. I’m curious what our purple haired gal is going to get into next.
4 Stars
Narrator Tanya Eby
I enjoyed the crisp, clean reading done by Tanya. She hits those high and low points and has a very pleasant voice.
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Thanks so much to Tantor Audio and the author for the complimentary copy.
My review is voluntarily given.
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Synopsis
Five feet two inches of slick repartee, near-purple hair, and poetic imagination, twenty-year-old Rune hasn’t been in Manhattan for very long. But she’s crafty enough to have found a squatter’s paradise in an empty TriBeca loft, and a video store job that feeds her passion for old movies. It’s a passion she shares with her favorite customer, Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same video over and over. The flick is a noir classic based on a real-life unsolved bank heist and a million missing dollars. It’s called Manhattan Is My Beat.
That’s the tape Rune is picking up from Mr. Kelly’s shabby apartment when she finds him shot to death. The police suspect a robbery gone wrong, but Rune is certain the key to solving the murder is hidden somewhere in the hazy, black-and-white frames of Mr. Kelly’s beloved movie. But as Rune hits the mean streets of New York to find answers, she gets caught up in a dangerous adventure more chilling than anything Hollywood could dream up. As her story draws to its terrifying conclusion, Rune’s final close-up may include the killer of a costar.
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