Hot Poppies

Artie Cohen #2

by Reggie Nadelson

A murder in New York's diamond district; a dead Chinese girl with a photograph in her pocket; a plastic bag of irradiated heroin lying on the mantelpiece in an empty apartment; a fire in a sweatshop in the city's swarming Chinatown; the worst blizzard in New York history...

These events conspire to bring ex-cop Artie Cohen out of retirement and back into an obsessive world of murder and politics that nearly killed him. Artie's struggles to link them take him from New York, his own back yard, to Hong Kong, site of the last big grab on earth, where everything, and everyone, is for sale...

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Reggie Nadelson is a New Yorker who also makes her home in London. She is a journalist and documentary film-maker. She is the author of the critically acclaimed series featuring Artie Cohen, Moscow-born New Yorker and the first great post-Cold War cop.

Series:
* Artie Cohen

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A page turner and I do like Artie Cohen the main character. I did however prefer "Red Mercury Blues" - if nothing else for the great title. Will read more in this series.

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a bit more than 3 stars. Reggie Nadelson reminds me of Sara Paretsky except this is NYC not Chicago. Hot Poppies (I believe the first of the series) focuses on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It could just as well be called "The Friends of Artie Cohen". Great sense of place and good nuanced characters are the book's strengths. Artie is really Artemy, an ex-pat from Moscow, who became an NYC policeman and then left the force. The plot sucks him back into detective work through a friend's plea for help with the body of a Chinese girl found in his office. Like Paretsky, Nadelson likes big issues and the Chinese "snakeheads" with the traffic in women smuggled in from mainland China are front and center. I understand some of the other Artie Cohen books are better but this was a good start.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not too different from Red Mercury, in terms of both strengths and weaknesses: Wonderful writing and characters, well-created tone, weak plotting with a very similar McGuffin at its center. Again, though, the writing is so good, the weaknesses tend to be of little consequence by the end of the book.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not as good as others I've read by this author. I thought it was a bit hard to keep up with the different characters, the villains were hard to distinguish from each other. Nadelson is very good at describing the setting, putting the reader in the actual spot where the story is taking place.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Babies were in jeopardy which is usually a deal breaker for me.........But enjoyable none the less.