Aftershock

Mici Anhalt #1

by Lillian O'Donnell

As an investigating agent for New York City's Crime Victims Compensation Board, Anhalt determines to find the actual murderer of a famed and philandering hairdresser and to clear his pregnant widow of the crime

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Married J. Leonard O'Donnell. Lived in New York, NY. Interred in Maple Grove Cemetery.
Began career in theater then turned to writing crime novels. Longest running character was NY City policewoman Norah Mulcahaney, but also had series for Mici Anhalt, a crime victims investigator, and private detective Gwenn Ramadge.

Reviews

[Kim Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned about Lillian O'Donnell from my friend Terry Ambrose (mystery author and writer of fantastic articles about the mystery world). O'Donnell is one of the forerunners in the world of women authors writing about female police officers. While waiting to get my hands on the first volume in her Norah Mulcahaney series, I grabbed this book from the library --- it tells the story of three NYC crimes through the victims' dealings with the city's Victims Compensation Board. The book is gritty, as is to be expected from 1970s fiction ... but certainly not as gritty as what's on offer today. I enjoyed the main character, Mici Anhalt, whose attempt to make sure the victims get fair treatment finds herself, by necessity, trying to solve the mysteries surrounding the crimes. The writing is a bit uneven (some of it, I think, simply due to the style of the time), but when it's good, it's very good, as is evidenced in the opening sentence: "It was a thin scream; the empty street and the night silence briefly nurtured it, then it was sucked up between the high-rise buildings like smoke up a flue and wafted away across the starless sky."