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The Letter Writer
Dan Fesperman
Knopf, April 2016 (hardcover), Vintage Crime/Black Lizard,
March 2017 (paperback)
Woodrow Cain is a newly hired detective sergeant in the NYPD. The year is 1942 and New
York is rife with rumors of sabotage and espionage among the immigrant communities.
Cain is newly arrived from a small town in N. Carolina where he had served as a senior
detective. His job plunges him into conflict between the entrenched corruption of the force,
the new Police Commissioner’s determination to clean up, his wealthy father-in-law’s
connections and his need to care for his daughter, since he is separated from his alcoholic
wife.
Cain’s first case is a floater, a dead German who had been tortured with cigarettes before
being killed and dumped in the Hudson. Investigation of the man’s connections leads to a
strange character, an elderly man who makes his living as a translator of letters and other
documents, and in the process gathers much information about the immigrant
neighborhoods, Danzinger is a man with a murky past. Cain and Danzinger must learn to
trust one another as secrets from their respective pasts threaten each of them and impede the
investigation.
Alternating between Cain’s point of view and Danzinger’s, the case expands as more
victims die and others disappear. Nazi sympathizers may be at work, and members of the
large Italian immigrant community in New York are suspect as well. Meanwhile, some of
the nation’s largest financial firms may be implicated in money changing schemes that
benefited the Nazi regime.
The events of The Letter Writer are based on actual persons and institutions of the time,
including mobsters Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia (Murder, Inc.), D.A. Frank Hogan
and Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Haffenden. The author has done an impressive
job of research and of portraying the different neighborhoods and economic strata of the
city. Enjoyable as both history and mystery.
Two small quibbles: no one in a Jewish neighborhood would think that a man carrying a bag
is on his way to synagogue. Nor would a man from a small southern town be surprised that
a woman he dates is not wearing makeup. That just wasn’t routine outside of high society
and show business in 1942.
Dan Fesperman
Knopf, April 2016 (hardcover), Vintage Crime/Black Lizard,
March 2017 (paperback)
Woodrow Cain is a newly hired detective sergeant in the NYPD. The year is 1942 and New
York is rife with rumors of sabotage and espionage among the immigrant communities.
Cain is newly arrived from a small town in N. Carolina where he had served as a senior
detective. His job plunges him into conflict between the entrenched corruption of the force,
the new Police Commissioner’s determination to clean up, his wealthy father-in-law’s
connections and his need to care for his daughter, since he is separated from his alcoholic
wife.
Cain’s first case is a floater, a dead German who had been tortured with cigarettes before
being killed and dumped in the Hudson. Investigation of the man’s connections leads to a
strange character, an elderly man who makes his living as a translator of letters and other
documents, and in the process gathers much information about the immigrant
neighborhoods, Danzinger is a man with a murky past. Cain and Danzinger must learn to
trust one another as secrets from their respective pasts threaten each of them and impede the
investigation.
Alternating between Cain’s point of view and Danzinger’s, the case expands as more
victims die and others disappear. Nazi sympathizers may be at work, and members of the
large Italian immigrant community in New York are suspect as well. Meanwhile, some of
the nation’s largest financial firms may be implicated in money changing schemes that
benefited the Nazi regime.
The events of The Letter Writer are based on actual persons and institutions of the time,
including mobsters Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia (Murder, Inc.), D.A. Frank Hogan
and Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Haffenden. The author has done an impressive
job of research and of portraying the different neighborhoods and economic strata of the
city. Enjoyable as both history and mystery.
Two small quibbles: no one in a Jewish neighborhood would think that a man carrying a bag
is on his way to synagogue. Nor would a man from a small southern town be surprised that
a woman he dates is not wearing makeup. That just wasn’t routine outside of high society
and show business in 1942.
