Ah, New York! Home of Times Square, the Mets, the Met, the Statue of Liberty… the list could go on and on. Oh, but let’s not forget Broadway and NYPD Detective Mike Stoneman – because it’s the latter rather mismatched pairing that features in Kevin G Chapman’s latest Big Apple-based police procedural.
Fans of this series know Stoneman as a solid cop, more at home at a baseball game than a fancy pants charity gala. But that’s where we find him as Double Takedown opens – he and partner Jason Dickson are suited and booted and at a star-studded fundraising event at New York’s David H Koch Theater with their wives. The event is wall to wall Broadway glitterati and Stoneman in particular is feeling out of place among the great and the good.
We’re 45 minutes into the ballet when a woman’s scream brings the performance to a halt – and suddenly Stoneman and Dickson are in their element. A man has collapsed in the front row and they immediately jump into crowd control mode. The audience member is Alex Bishop, the Tony-nominated star of a current Broadway show. Minutes later, he’s dead. Talk about being on the spot!
Skip a year and the rather unimaginatively titled Ballet Murder case is about to go to court. In the dock is Nathan Matthews, the director of Godfather: The Musical, in which Alex Bishop had the starring role. Stoneman and Dickson unearthed overwhelming evidence to show Matthews is guilty of poisoning his star turn – but when a PI hired by the defendant approaches them, claiming the director has been framed, is it time for the partners to take another look at it? Could they have been guilty of tunnel vision?
With the trial imminent and a seemingly watertight case, Stoneman can’t see the point and neither can the prosecutors. Things have to take a back seat when the guys are handed another murder to investigate – the apparent drug overdose of a well-known influencer is actually a stone cold killing – but Dickson won’t let the Bishop investigation lie. He puts forward a convincing case to his partner and soon the pair is working in tandem, and they uncover some surprising things which could even link the two deaths.
One of the great things about a Mike Stoneman book is the clever use of location. Our detectives have travelled widely during the series, but it is when they’re on the case back in good ol’ New York City that this pair really come into their own. Local knowledge has to count for something, right? In Double Takedown there’s the added help (or should that be interference?) of the pair’s extended family, with wives and assorted relatives getting in on the act and occasionally coming up with the goods. The chapters where they all come together for their brainstorming sessions are brilliantly done and very entertaining.
This is a novel that literally goes behind the scenes of Broadway, and those peeks at the hidden machinations of the theatre business add pizazz and drama to a story that keeps you engaged throughout and will prove fascinating to readers whether they be stage fans or not.
Kevin G Chapman’s trademark plotting skills are on display too, with plenty of tricks up his sleeve to keep us wrong-footed and frantically turning the pages. Occasionally things may fall into place a little too easily, but that doesn’t spoil the reading enjoyment. It’s a heady mix of Broadway glamour and dogged detective work that gives this police procedural a hint of star quality. Several others in this six-book (and counting) series have earned awards, and I get the feeling that Double Takedown could soon be eyeing the prizes too.
The backstage world of the theatre – this time in Hull – also features in Louise Beech’s haunting I am Dust.
Self-published
Print/Kindle
£3.94
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
