Red House

Filomena Buscarsela #4

by K.J.A. Wishnia

First she was a beat cop, then she was unemployed. Now, in Red House , K.j.a. Wishnia's dynamic Filomena Buscarsela has apprenticed herself to a New York City P.I. firm to put in the three years necessary to get her own P.I. license, something she needs to earn enough money to support herself and her daughter. Trouble is, she often agrees to take on sticky neighborhood cases pro bono rather than handle the big-bucks clients her bosses would prefer.

While helping out her more "senior" colleagues with her own superior investigative techniques bred from years on the beat, Fil agrees to look into the disappearance of a young illegal immigrant. Then, witnessing the arrest of a neighbor on marijuana possession charges that nearly turns into a shootout with the police, Fil is roped into finding out what went wrong. Trying to balance charity cases like these with bread-and-butter paying cases, not to mention single motherhood, Fil is quickly in over her head dodging bullish cops, left-wing zealots, and corrupt landlords in their working class Queens neighborhood.

All in all, it's a heady NY mix that mystery fans will applaud for its originality and suspense. K. j. a. Wishnia's mastery of the chaos of New York and the intense drama borne out of daily life in the melting pot of Queens makes for thrilling reading.

Genres: Fiction

280 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 12, 2001

About the author

aka Kenneth Wishnia.

Kenneth John Alexander Wishnia's debut novel, 23 Shades of Black, featuring Filomena Buscarsela, was short-listed for the Edgar and Anthony awards for best first novel in 1998. He has written three subsequent Filomena mysteries, Soft Money, The Glass Factory and Red House. Born in New Hampshire, he is a graduate of Brown University and has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife, a native of Ecuador, and their two children, and is a professor in the English Department at SUNY Suffolk.

Reviews

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has an excellent leading character (Filomena Buscarsele) but the tale literally has a cast of hundreds and, seemingly, a separate case for each of those hundreds. You will need a chart or a scorecard to keep track of everyone. And then the major case is not satisfactorily ended and all of the other people and cases are left in the air. Too confusing for me.

[Spuddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

#5 Filomena Buscarsela mystery. Fil, Ecuadoran-born ex-cop, having survived her bout with lethal doses of toxic chemicals with only occasional lung problems, now is working as a rookie investigator for a big private eye firm, doing the necessary apprenticeship to get her investigator's license. Filomena decided that she needs to provide not only a loving, but a more financially stable home for daughter Antonia, now 12 years old.

However, the pressure to bring in real paying clients to the firm (which most of the Spanish-speaking community are not) is huge, so she is kept very busy. And on the side, she's helping a couple of clients for virtually no pay at all. When the residents of a particular apartment house keep meeting with various accidents, she tries to follow the trail back to who stands to gain if the apartment were to end up empty. The first assumption is the landlord, but who's feeding the baddies information that lets them do their dirty work so easily?

I really like Filomena's gutsy character, with her unique outlook on life and a cross-section of another of the little cultural blips that most of us don't get to see or experience. If I remember rightly, I wasn't overly thrilled with the previous book, but this one seemed back on track. Only one more book in this series, and I for one will be sad to see it end.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 2001, this fourth entry in a New York-set series features Filomnena Buscarsela finds the ex-cop working as an entry-level investigator for a private investigation firm, clocking in the hours so she can eventually get her own PI's license. The book is a bit chaotic, as she bounces around between four main storylines -- all of which generally involve immigrants or other marginalized people.

There's an elderly woman seeking her missing adult son, there's a wife whose hard-working husband is accused of pulling a gun on police officers, there's a Russian factory owner who suspects his employees of bootlegging the product, and there's a community activist who is killed by unknown assailants in the street. And if that's not enough, she's also in a constant battle to prove her worth to her boss, her coworkers, and various cops -- not to mention fending off unwanted harassment and juggling her own romantic impulses.

Oh yeah, there's also a plotline around a developer trying to move squatters out of an apartment building and an entire thread around mercury poisoning... There's just a lot crammed in here, and somewhat surprisingly, it mostly works. She's a little too hard-boiled as a character, but that makes for some good banter and one-liners along the way. Definitely a different take on the detective story and definitely worth checking out if you like your New York fiction to take place in boroughs other than Manhattan.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great action, great characters, and even better ethos. Looking forward to reading more in the Filomena Buscarsela series.