BLOOD COUNT

Praise for Blood Count

The Guardian, February 19

Nadelson's ninth Artie Cohen novel finds the Russian-born NYPD detective investigating the death of an ailing Russian woman, one of the few white occupants of a once-grand apartment block in Harlem. Cohen is alerted to the death by an ex-girlfriend who lives there, but when he arrives there's a strange air of something having been covered up. Blood Count is a traditional whodunit in the sense that the main suspects are contained within the building.

Set shortly after Obama's victory, it is passionately concerned with race and progress, and with channelling the memories of those tenants old enough to remember when Louis Armstrong was their neighbour. But it's also wonderfully claustrophobic. As one character observes: "[People] visit, they listen for each other, soon as they hear footsteps in the hall, they pop out of their doors, you know?" We know. (see full review)

Daily Mail February 17

New York's Harlem is undergoing gentrification and every developer wants a piece of it. Which is why, when elderly people start dying prematurely in a desirable apartment building, detective Artie Cohen thinks he smells a rat. 

He’s been summoned there by his beloved ex-girlfriend Lily who is hysterical about the death of her friend, but when Artie shows up she clearly has something to hide. Not only that, but there seems to be another boyfriend on the scene - and he’s a cop to boot.

That settles it for Artie: he’s going to stay put and find out what’s eating her.

Londongrad, Nadelson’s last great thriller centred around dodgy Russians in London. Here too, Russian gangs play a big part. 

But, as always with Nadelson, it’s the way she tells it rather than the story itself. She makes Harlem with its fascinating up-and-down history live and breathe on the page. Humming with suspense, this is New York noir at its best. (see full review)

Salman Rushie interviews Reggie Nadelson for Vanity Fair

Artie Cohen’s Harlem Whodunit

In Blood Count, out at the end of October, New York City cop Artie Cohen finds himself entangled in the headlines: the markets are tanking, Obama has just been elected, and in Harlem, people are mysteriously dying. As a white detective in the black neighborhood, Artie is out of his element—but Reggie Nadelson, his creator, is “at the top of her game” in this thrilling book, per Publishers Weekly. The author talks to novelist Salman Rushdie about her hero, her city, and her visions for future books.

Salman Rushdie: “Down those mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.” Where does Artie Cohen stand in the moral spectrum of literary private eyes?
Reggie Nadelson: As a detective, Artie Cohen probably shares some DNA with Philip Marlowe, George Smiley, Arkady Renko. He probably yearns to add a bit of Harry Bosch. In the U.S.S.R., where he grew up, his father was a K.G.B. officer, and Artie knows in his gut the moral ambiguity of the universe and what it does to people. In Blood Count, set in Harlem, he finds that African-Americans, like Soviets, behave one way in private, another in the world. (Read More)