Sleepless City, by Reed Farrel Coleman, belongs to the sub-genre of cop thrillers featuring burned out, morally ambiguous, but otherwise superhuman Irish American detectives. I was reminded of the work of Don Winslow, who, unsurprisingly has a blurb at the top of the front cover that refers to Nick Ryan, the protagonist here, as “One of the coolest characters I have ever read.” Indeed, you keep expecting Ryan to retreat to some filthy cop bar and hoist a few with Winslow’s Denny Malone (of The Force) while the bartender calls them “boyos.”
I grew up in a New York suburb that was about 30% second- and third-generation Irish Americans, so I know the terrain, up to a point. Nick Ryan meets many of the criteria of this sub-genre: Brave, but traumatized war veteran with amazing hand-to-hand combat skills? Check. Has at least one relative drinking himself to death? Check. Has beautiful women throwing themselves at him, but he’s not sure he wants sex with beautiful women at the moment, given his many morally complicated crises? Check.
Not that I didn’t enjoy this book. I did. Reed Farrel Coleman is a skilled writer, and this is an engaging, suspenseful read. It’s just a little heavy on the tropes of overwrought Irish NYPD saga.
We first meet Ryan, a superbly talented undercover cop, as he rescues a black man from a beating at the hands of some corrupt cops during a march protesting the shooting of an unarmed black man by the police. Ryan’s fighting a one-man war against bad cops, and he knows he’s losing, or at least changing nothing. Plus, everyone hates him anyway because his father ratted out his buddies on the NYPD to some mayoral commission. Ryan’s guilty by association.
After resolving, but failing, to kill a child molester who, in Ryan’s mind “needed killing,” Ryan is approached by a mysterious lawyer representing high level, but powerful people in the city. If he’ll do what they want, he’ll have unlimited access to information that no cop is supposed to have. He’ll have all manner of blind eyes turned away from his questionable assignments—all of which are allegedly righteous, but outside of the normal way the justice system works. That’s the whole point.
At first, Ryan wants no part of this. But, soon enough, he’s pulled into a racially-charged fiasco of a crime scene that, if publicized, will cause the city to explode in violence. Ryan quickly orchestrates a brilliant misdirection that causes the press to chase its own tail and give the NYPD enough time to sanitize the situation beyond all recognition.
His handlers are pleased, but this, in my view, is where the book starts to get onto shaky ground. Not in terms of suspense or thrills, mind you. The author is great at that, but he’s faltering in terms of sympathy. Do you want Ryan to get away with this? Maybe the city needs a good explosion if this is how the cops behave, no?
Once in, however, Ryan is in, and he’s quickly off to his next adventure, which involves chasing down a Bernie Madoff-like character who stole money from a police retirement fund. Along the way, he’s back in touch with his ex-wife, who still hates and loves him, but can’t stay away. A fearless (in her own mind) reporter is on his trail. He meets a violent, amoral man who will clearly become the “Tonto” of this series as it unfolds.
Sleepless City is the first in what will surely become a reliable series of crime thrillers featuring Nick Ryan. Each book will mine the veins of burned out Irish NYPD detective sensibilities, complicated love stories, and the unsatisfying quest for justice in “the system” that leaves no man unscathed.