The Devil's Daughter

November 13, 2023
Slick pacing and well-drawn details strengthen screenwriter Greisman’s otherwise familiar debut, a mid-century noir concerning crooked cops and disappeared daughters. In 1957 New York City, private investigator Jack Coffey is persuaded by childhood acquaintance Richie Costello—now the executive secretary to the archbishop of New York—to locate Lucy, the 16-year-old daughter of a powerful parishioner named Louis Garret. Louis, a filthy-rich Manhattan financier, is offering 10 grand as a retainer and another 10 as a bonus if Jack brings his daughter home safe and sound. However, after consultations with an associate of Louis’s and a friend of Lucy’s, Jack struggles to determine if Lucy is really the innocent girl her father implies, or if she poses a threat to the people around her. When Lucy’s rumored boyfriend, handsome philanderer Rex Halsey, is found dead in the East River, Jack realizes he’s caught in a web far more complicated than he initially imagined, and before long, he’s chasing down mobsters in hopes they don’t pick him off first. Though seasoned genre fans will find much of the plotting routine, Coffey, who pals around with famous actors and jazz musicians, is a hugely winning protagonist, and Greisman keeps his foot on the gas throughout. A sequel would be welcome. Agent: Adam Chromy, Movable Type.

December 15, 2023
Hired by wealthy Wall Street financier Louis Garrett to find his missing teenage daughter, Lucy, scuffling New York P.I. Jack Coffey uncovers a child sex ring. The time is the late 1950s. Lucy, Coffey hears soon after taking the case, has actually been abused by her father. For mysterious reasons, she doesn't want to be found, showing up in public one minute and disappearing the next. In his efforts to save her, Coffey puts himself in the path of bad guys who make a practice of beating him up and shooting him. That doesn't sit well with his devoted girlfriend, V (for Victoria), a super-successful fashion model who could be off getting richer on European runways instead of tending to Coffey's wounds. But her loyalty has no limits, culminating in an outlandish action scene in which this Texas girl shows off her shooting skills. In his first novel, TV screenwriter Greisman does an entertaining job of recycling crime fiction tropes. He's good at capturing the varied looks and sounds of Manhattan, populating the story with fictionalized celebrities from the era. The problem with the name-dropping is that it's never clear how Coffey, a product of Hell's Kitchen who fought in World War II, became tight with eccentric geniuses like Marlon Brando and jazz great Thelonious Monk--or what Greisman was thinking in rendering them as such squares. (Brando's liveliest moment is saying how much he likes having his life threatened. "It's all grist for the creative mill," the Method man says.) The beautiful model's attraction to the schlubby Coffey is also hard to figure. It might work in another kind of novel, but in this noir setting, it's pure fantasy. A well-crafted throwback thriller softened by celebrity worship.

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