It’s the time of pay phones, fax machines and piles of paperwork.
And in Ironton, N.J., nine women have been killed, their deaths played out over months as fear grows in the city.
Into this scenario is newly-minted Detective Frank Nagler, eager to take on the task of finding the killer, but daunted by the description supplied by the medical examiner: “What we have here is an experiment in death.”
“The Red Hand” is a prequel to the award-winning Frank Nagler Mystery series. Among the characters we meet are Charlie Adams, a teenage hoodlum and Martha Nagler, Frank’s wife, whose love carries him through the bad times ahead.
Can an old-style detective story capture a modern audience?
It can if it is filled with characters that resonate, has a love story for the ages, settings that carry weight and is layered with issues that raise the story above the everyday.
It’s gritty, moving, probably confounding, but it resonates.
Women are missing. Missing would imply a willingness to leave.
Women are not missing: They were taken.
