Blood Count: An Artie Cohen Mystery (Artie Cohen Mysteries)

In New York's Harlem, every street is steeped in history, and the music of jazz legends plays in the memories of its residents. Artie Cohen could feel at home here - if he wasn't on the trail of a killer intent on erasing the past... An elderly Russian woman is found dead in her apartment, and Cohen finds himself in the centre of a violent debate between city developers and an older generation of Harlem tenants. Not to mention the tensions between himself, his old girlfriend, and her new, younger lover. Meanwhile someone in these once-violent streets is intent on hauling Harlem into the twenty-first century, no matter what it takes...### From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Set in December 2008, Nadelson's ninth mystery featuring Russian émigré and NYPD detective Artie Cohen (after 2009's Londongrad) shows her at the top of her game. Cohen is roused in the middle of the night by a call from a former girlfriend, journalist Lily Hanes, who asks for his help dealing with a dead neighbor, Marianna Simonova. Despite Hanes's claim that Simonova died of natural causes in her Harlem apartment, Cohen suspects Hanes isn't telling him everything. When his digging reveals that another elderly resident of Simonova's building died unexpectedly about six months earlier, he wonders whether a desire to spare the seriously ill suffering was behind both deaths. Alternatively, the tenants may have been in the way of an ambitious developer's plans to upgrade the building. Nadelson has few peers at incorporating a strong whodunit plot into a contemporary police inquiry, but her real strength is Cohen himself, a tortured but sympathetic soul whose close relationships are never straightforward.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.### From BooklistTypically, Nadelson’s series hero, Russian immigrant and NYPD detective Artie Cohen, careens around the city at breakneck pace or, as in Londongrad (2009), jets across the ocean, often to Russia, in search of answers to whatever case is bedeviling him. Cohen is bedeviled this time, too, but there is very little movement. The action takes place almost entirely within the walls of a Harlem apartment building, where Cohen’s former girlfriend, Lily, now lives and where her Russian neighbor, Marianna, has died under suspicious circumstances. Fearing that she might be implicated in the death, Lily calls Artie for help. What he finds in the building is a cross section of the new Harlem—young professionals living alongside older, affluent African Americans, all with agendas about the future of the building. Backstories bring together the concerns of the younger residents with a world Artie knows well—that of Russian immigrants, also on the make, with many conflicted over the ideals of new and old Russia, as the black characters are over new and old Harlem. Although not as action-oriented as earlier installments in the series, Nadelson’s latest offers a fascinating look at culture change in New York’s melting pot. --Bill Ott

Mid-December 2008. Barack Obama has just been elected; all New York is ecstatic, especially Harlem. On a freezing night a few weeks later, detective Artie Cohen gets a late call from his ex girlfriend, Lily Hanes, begging for his help. Lily has been living at the Louis Armstrong Apartments, one of Harlem's great buildings, while working on Obama's campaign; now her Russian neighbor, Marianna Simonova, has died, and Lily fears she's at fault and needs Artie's Russian connections. Over a weekend when the city is locked in by snow and cold, with the financial markets tanking, one after another people at the Armstrong die. Artie, out of his element, a white detective in a black world, is drawn inexorably into the realm of Sugar Hill and the Armstrong, where almost everybody except for the real estate developers seems locked in the past.

Working to solve the murders, Artie tries desperately to win Lily back. Blood Count is a murder mystery, a love story, and a tale about New York, race, real estate, money, and music, with an ending one could never predict.

In mid-December of 2008, Detective Artie Cohen receives a panicked call from ex-girlfriend Lily, now living at Sugar Hill's famed Louis Armstrong Apartments. Her elderly Russian neighbor has died, and Lily fears that she is at fault. As more residents die, Artie discovers a world filled with tangled relationships and surprising secrets.