OUTERBOROUGH BLUES: A Brooklyn Mystery by Andrew Cotto

I discovered Andrew Cotto on Twitter. He followed me. The information on his website intrigued me. I followed back and placed his books on my Wish List. Shortly after, I found myself in the Barnes and Noble in New York City’s Union Square. I searched the shelves for his name and was fortunate to snatch up the last Autographed copy of Outerborough Blues. At the time I was reading Lamott’s Bird by Bird, so I placed the novel in my TBR pile.

Last September I dusted it off and fell headlong into a vortex of loss and forward motion. Andrew Cotto has written one of the best prologues I’ve ever read. I was immediately interlinked with narrator Caesar Stiles, a haunted soul driven to find peace.

My mother’s mother came to this country in the usual way—she got on a boat with other immigrants and sailed from Sicily. She wasn’t one of them, however: neither tired nor poor or part of any huddled mass. Instead, she traveled alone, with her money in one sock and a knife in the other, coming to the new world with an old world motive—to murder the man that had left her for America.

Film noir is a favorite of mine. Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers never fail to rope me in. The shadows, low lighting, the gritty mood and matching voice of the narrator are only some of the elements of fascination. I believe Andrew Cotto also grew up fascinated by film noir, for his novel is drenched in its style. His descriptions twist and rock to unearth the characters emotional states while steeped in the narrator’s point of view.

She stood across the bar’s curve, her hands tucked out of sight, her shoulders pinched as if she had failed, while dressing to separate hanger from garment.

The grit and detailed mood, the picture window view of character, the way each character zeroes in on the next to form a connection that is unique and delineates the relationship like a crystal fractures light, held me in awe—until it didn’t.

Sometime after Caesar sets out to track down the beautiful French girl’s missing artist brother, I became restless. At the time, I believed the action of the story had gotten lost in the descriptions. I couldn’t keep tabs on Caesar’s purpose, so I stopped reading.

For the next six months I filled my days and nights with other authors and my WIP. Yet, all through those months Outerborough Blues gnawed and haunted me the way only true film noir can. I removed the bookmark from my stopping point, but returned to the beginning, and promised myself to read Cotto’s novel straight through. I could take breaks, but no other books would cross my path until I was finished with the Blues. This is what I discovered.

I pressed through the heat of hard stares and fought the discomfort of being unwanted and possibly in danger. 

Once I made a commitment to the novel, I realized I had been the problem last fall. Multiple reading assignments for a course I was enrolled in, on top of recovering from a physical injury had created more of a distraction than I realized. I never considered being stretched too thin because I often read more than one book at a time without difficulty. On the other side of my course and recovery, I found a resurgence of delight in Outerborough Blues and never thought about putting it down.

The opening lost no luster the second time through. In fact, I appreciated Cotto’s style more. Caesar’s unrest is steady fuel as he takes on his Sam Spade role. True to film noir, we are never certain where he will go next, or how he will handle himself as he digs deeper into the missing person mystery. And there lies our joy. We piece together the clues only as he does.

Cotto’s novel unfolds with a razor’s edge to reveal only what we need to know, when we need to know it. And the six degrees of separation between the characters from past to present remind us to keep our friends close and our enemies closer.

Outside, a sheath of newspaper rattled over the sidewalk like urban tumbleweed.

Outerborough Blues is an underground mystery that taps into the dreams and myths we create to survive and shows us how to sort through them in order to deal with the reality of life, and accept the truth about who we are and what we want. A haunting tale you don’t want to miss.

Step into the streets of Urban Noir with Outerborough Blues.