Blood Money

By Tom Bradby

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Blood Money is set in America during the Wall Street crash of 1929. Joe Quinn is a young detective who has just been drafted in to the headquarters of the NYPD. On a Monday morning a corpse lies on the ground on his back, presumably having thrown himself off the roof of a nearby building. The instructions from those in authority are clear—it is no more than the suicide of a desperate man in desperate times. But, when Joe discovers two sets of footprints on the roof, one pointing backwards, he is convinced that the dead man was pushed, meaning murder, not suicide, and this becomes even more convincing when a plug of cotton wool soaked in chloroform is found stuck in his throat at the autopsy.

What follows is a fast-moving story involving Joe’s family as well as the politics of the day. Everyone wants to play the event down, but why?

Not having read many American thrillers, I found the dialogue distracting at first, but the tale moved along at a great pace with enough twists and turns to suit the most jaded critic.