A Falling Knife

An Evan Adair Mystery #1

by Judith Deborah

In a landscape strewn with dollars, how do you catch a killer who's playing for higher stakes than money?

Ex-detective Evan Adair has a gift for working out how the dead got that way, but the truth never brought anybody back. After twenty-three years at the NYPD and a devastating private loss, he wants no part of another investigation.

But an old colleague comes calling with a tantalizing riddle. A Wall Street wunderkind, a young quant with everything to live for, has taken a bizarre public dive from an opera balcony. Was the fall his own idea? And his injuries, as it turns out, weren't enough to kill him. So how -- and why -- did he die?

Soon there is another death, this one a vicious knife attack. The dual investigation draws Adair into the byzantine worlds of finance and high-stakes biotech. He finds secrets with long histories and numbers that can talk -- if only he can figure out how to listen.

Genres: Mystery

412 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

Lover of Wodehouse. Writer of novels. Quaffer of gimlets. Mother of three.

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

After several hours of listening, I had no idea who these characters were and what was going on. For this type of book, I don't necessarily think it was terribly written, but conspiracies, finance, and big science are a hat trick of boredom for me, and the writing and narration did nothing to elevate the subject matter to make them interesting.

[Cindy B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully intricate plot and characters that you miss when your finished reading (well, not all of them). Life’s unfair but sometimes things end well enough - which kept me from feeling cheated with the ending. Well narrated by Adam Barr and Judith Deborah. Nice to have a man playing men and a woman playing women.

[Sara Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't checked yet, but if this is the beginning of a series, I'll continue reading them. The character development was good for all of the main players, and there were a lot! I enjoyed Deborah's writing style, and the reader was very good.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an oddly lyrical piece, given its subject matter: Wall Street, Biomedical research, murder.

Ms. Deborah is to be commended highly for taking some unbelievably tired tropes—the jaded ex-New-York-cop, the ball-busting female Wall Street exec, the financial culture shrouded in secrecy so you never know who's protagonist or antagonist—and breathing new life into them. Everything that's said and done makes sense, isn't overwrought (at least not anymore than actual conversations on Wall Street are), carries me along, and leads to a more than satisfying conclusion.

I do have to subtract one star because it may actually be too lyrical. I wasn't sitting on the edge of my seat, wondering who killed the victim (and, for that matter, how). "Gripping" isn't the word I would use to describe it. Intelligent, well-crafted, not a word out of place... "slick" wouldn't be right, with its connotations of false or superficial, but "smooth" would be. A fine Kentucky bourbon of a mystery.

[Mickey Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a great plot and also a very interesting sub-plot. The characters are very interesting and the setting is New York city, and it's well fleshed out.

Two things keep me from giving it five stars. There are at least 15 characters and the story is told from the point of view of at least 8 of them. At times, the POV changes within one short paragraph and I found it confusing. The second issue is that I had difficulty understanding aspects of the book dealing with Wall Street trading. Along with a few words I didn't know which weren't explained, I was at a loss to figure out what group of investors was doing what to the other and why. These two things almost made me give up on the book when I was about 1/4 through it, but in the end I'm glad I kept reading.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retired detective, Evan Adair, is called in to help a colleague solve what looks like the suicide of a genius financial expert. Even though it is thought to be suicide there are some things about it that don't seem right. Then, the same colleague asks him to solve the murder of a biotech engineer. Are these two incidents related in some way? That is the question as Adair looks into the history of each man and finds some interesting facts about each.

Interesting but hard to follow at times. However, audio books can be hard to follow when you are doing other things at the same time. It is harder to go back and relisten to parts sometimes.

[Carol Giacoletto-Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Falling Knife is a very complex mystery. The story is interesting and difficult to figure out as there is more than one death. I enjoyed the story but it is not an easy read. A math genius who works in the stock market dies mysteriously. So if you aren't familiar with the terms, you may spend a lot of time on Google.

[Ansam Zedan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed it

At first the book was a bit confusing with all the names and new characters. But after the first part, the story was capturing and exciting.
Highly recommended.

[Barnaby Haszard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apart from some confusion in Part One, where over a dozen characters are introduced that you can only later begin to keep track of, I greatly enjoyed A Falling Knife. I'm not usually one for detective stories but this one was extremely satisfying to read. The characters, in particular, are very strong, as is Deborah's capacity for description -- of people, of places, of emotional states, of action. Two weeks after I finished it, I still find myself replaying certain passages in my mind as if they were movie scenes.

This book deserves a much bigger audience, and Deborah's craft deserves more than just one book (so far at least). I'll be keeping an eye open for her next one.