The Red Scare Murders
The Red Scare Murders is a noir murder mystery set in New York City in 1950 at the height of the McCarthy era Cold War anti-communist witch hunts. Mick Mulligan is a newly established private investigator, formerly an animator for Walt Disney, having fled L.A., himself being outed as a “fellow traveler,”, and now divorced and broke. Harold Williams is a Black, Communist union organizer for cab drivers now sitting on death row two weeks away from being executed. Hired to find out who really killed wealthy cab company owner Irwin Johnson, Mick encounters all of the usual suspects: mobsters who want to control the union, hardline labor organizers, jilted wives and girlfriends, disgruntled cabbies and defrauded partners. Mick’s hunt for the truth is a down-to-the-wire dangerous road mined by those who don’t want the truth to get out.
Author Lehane depicts, as someone who might have experienced the times and places himself, the 1950 New York labor scene of roughneck cabbies, hardened labor organizers, violent racketeers and their brutish henchmen, the men in the trenches and the women who live, work and survive beside them. Mulligan is an apt hero, vulnerable and sympathetic, abhorring the use of violence but willing to take the necessary risks to save an innocent man’s life. Suspects litter the landscape. An ex-wife, jilted lovers, a Mafia boss, abused cabbies, cheated colleagues: no one wants to tell Mulligan anything they know that could free Harold. For those who love noir mysteries, The Red Scare Murders won’t disappoint. It checks all the boxes. Clues and red herrings aplenty. But if you can detect who the killer is, this may cause the pace of the novel to become more plodding, the plot over-complicated. Only, however, if you guess correctly.
