Tower of Babel, by Michael Sears begins by introducing us to Ted Molloy, a former high-flying attorney from Manhattan who has had a humbling fall from grace. Disbarred and adapting to life in his native Queens, Ted squeaks by earning commissions by redeeming overpayments on real estate foreclosures. Despite this huge comedown, Molloy seems to be a man who has made peace with his new reality. Sears is very skillful in laying out the complexities of a character in this situation, and we want Ted to succeed, though we’re not exactly sure how that’s going to happen.
Ted’s new “career” puts him in daily contact with Richie Rubiano, a sketchy character who earns cash by fishing through foreclosure records at the Queens courthouse. Rubiano has unearthed a big one, a transaction where the buyer has left over a million dollars on the table. If Ted can locate the property’s original owner, he stands to make a big fee. Ted says no. Big deals, in his experience, never work out.
Rubiano says he will pursue it on his own, which Ted thinks is a mistake, but he has no control over the man. Rubiano is quickly found murdered, and Ted is thrown into an investigation where he is a suspect. To clear his name, and perhaps more importantly to figure out how an elderly woman appears to have been defrauded out of her properties, Ted reluctantly starts to dig into what happened.
Ted rapidly gets pulled into a dangerous, murky underworld of Queens pay-for-play politics, the Russian mob, and everyday street filth and courthouse whackos who populate this story. It’s a far cry from Ted’s previous life as a fancy New York attorney… except, this case seems to bring him smack right back into that world. His ex-wife’s new wife (how 21st century!) is the attorney for the elderly victim.
Something stinks, and Ted is committed to finding out who has screwed whom. Still friends with his ex-wife, who is part of the family that controls his old firm, Ted finds himself trying to keep her happy while staying alive and solving the mystery.
The book is suspenseful, and Sears does a good job of keeping you wondering just what the heck is going on. Along the way, we meet a lot of colorful characters and get to experience the borough of Queens in all its multi-ethnic glory. Sears lays this all on a bit thickly, in my view, but I’m a New Yorker, so maybe I don’t appreciate Sears’ eye for detail.
Sears, a former Wall Street executive, also seems to know the world of real estate and the dirty business of foreclosures and deceptive practices they involve. That’s fun. You get the feeling that you’re really in the courthouse records room, and so forth.
I did find the relationship with the ex-wife a bit hard to believe, but it’s part of Ted’s character. Sears wants us to relate to him as a human being, and the friendship with the ex is part of that. The story drags in a few places, but otherwise it’s a good read.