The Man from Internal Affairs

by Nat Hentoff

Jazz-loving New York police detective Noah Green, trying to find a killer on New York's Lower East Side, finds himself trying, at the same time, to ward off the depredations of the Internal Affairs Division

Genres: Crime

215 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Nathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff was a historian, novelist, music critic, and syndicated columnist. As a civil libertarian and free-speech activist, he has been described by the Cato Institute—where he has been a senior fellow since 2009—as "one of the foremost authorities on the First Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker for over 25 years, and was formerly a columnist for The Village Voice for over 50 years, in addition to Legal Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and The Progressive, among others. Since 2014, he has been a regular contributor to the conservative Christian website WorldNetDaily, often in collaboration with his son Nick Hentoff.

Hentoff was a Fulbright Fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1950 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in education in 1972. The American Bar Association bestowed the Silver Gavel Award in 1980 for his columns on law and criminal justice, and five years later his undergraduate alma mater, Northeastern University, awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Law degree. While working at the Village Voice in 1995, the National Press Foundation granted him the W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award. He was a 1999 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary, "for his passionate columns championing free expression and individual rights," which was won by Maureen Dowd. In 2004 he became the first non-musician to be named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

Hentoff lectured at many colleges, universities, law schools, elementary, middle and high schools, and has taught courses in journalism and the U.S. Constitution at Princeton University and New York University. He serves on the Board of Advisors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) and is on the steering committee of the Reporters' Committee for the Freedom of the Press.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

The corpse had been severed at the waist. An exhausting and quite disgusting search of hundreds of garbage cans, whole blocks devoted solely to garbage, cellars, dumpsters, and other places where pieces of a corpse might have been stashed had not produced the other half of the body of this white female in her early twenties.

Though this go-round featured many of the same characters from Blues For Charlie Darwin, it lacked the camaraderie between Green and his partner, mainly because McKibbon was on vacation this time around, and Green's new partner . . . well, he may not be all that he seems.

"They are called field associates," the Chief patted the new, butter-smooth, deep brown leather briefcase on his desk. "They are police officers who act as our eyes and ears where they work. They report to us when they have reason to suspect police corruption or any other wrongdoing in the department."

"... nobody know who they are, including their commanders. Suffice to say, my dear, every cop lives in justified fear that every other cop may be with the IAD."

Together, the new "teammates" try to solve the gory mystery of the severed body . . . oops! make that - bodies - before a neighborhood boy winds up the next victim. As in the first book, there's plenty of gallows humor, and the plot kept me turning the pages. On the whole, not as good as the first one in the series, but not a waste of time, either.

[Edgar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very interesting plot, but the cold, grainy landscape of crime-ridden New York is vividly painted everywhere.