hen the Mayor of New York City’s grandson and the grandson’s wife are found shot, execution style, NYPD homicide Detective-Investigator Louis Martelli with his partner Sean O’Keeffe are put on the case.  It is clearly a message to the Mayor from someone destined to eternity in Dante’s eighth of Nine Circles of Hell,which in the epic fable is resided by the winged Geryon monster with fraudulent ways of disingenuous nature.  Hence, Theodore Jerome Cohen uses this metaphor to title the latest of Det. Louis Martelli’s case-adventures, Eighth Circle.

In typical “Cohen style,” the reader starts along with Det. Martelli at the same level – without a clue.  The execution was a professional hit; the guns cleansed of their serial numbers and left behind with absolutely no evidence nor witnesses.  Working on innate police instincts, Martelli enlists the help of Missy Dugan, a police department computer IT expert to seek out any impropriate item or graft by the Mayor which can somehow reveal who might have had a reason for murdering his family.  Stumbling upon a property tax reassessment begins the thread of investigation.  It seems as if someone made about $600,000 worth of improvements to the Mayor’s house for free.

In a fast moving, intelligent fashion, Det. Martelli “peels the onion” to the core of the relationships hidden deeply within the carefully covered-up tracks of fraud, pay-offs, and “favors” at the highest political levels in New York City on both sides of the moral fence – politicians and mobsters.  Learning of their way of doing business, Cohen actually sets the morality of each of these dichotomized social leaders as being very similar regarding integrity; both corrupt, only one side is elected to office and the other is nepotic “family.”

As an iconic writing technique used by Dr. Cohen in many of his novels, he inserts a variety of footnotes explaining everything from the basis of jesting remarks to factual research throughout the book, resulting in a hybrid mix of educating readers along with a clearly fictional storyline.  I find this makes for a unique type of reading genre, adding a strong foundation of credibility to the characters and situations. Coupled with a terse and poignant use of dialogue and cleverly human perceptions, the fast-paced book becomes a classic page-turner of enjoyment.  Throughout the book Det. Louis Martelli interacts with colleagues and criminals alike, all with the utmost respect, politeness and restraint of his anger – even when the battle is brought personally to his home and family.

Although Eighth Circle can stand on its own merits for a complete novel, it is best to read this in the proper succession of the prior Det. Louis Martelli series of adventures.  With remarkable events in his books paralleling the reality of real life situations in the news and current events, Theodore Cohen brings his stories to life under the belief that true events make for the best fiction.