Blood Count

An Artie Cohen Mystery

By: Reggie Nadelson

Narrated by: Elijah Alexander

Mid-December 2008. Barack Obama has just been elected; all New York is ecstatic, especially Harlem. On a freezing night a few weeks later, detective Artie Cohen gets a late call from his ex girlfriend, Lily Hanes, begging for his help. Lily has been living at the Louis Armstrong Apartments, one of Harlem's great buildings, while working on Obama's campaign; now her Russian neighbor, Marianna Simonova, has died, and Lily fears she's at fault and needs Artie's Russian connections.

Over a weekend when the city is locked in by snow and cold, with the financial markets tanking, one after another people at the Armstrong die. Artie, out of his element, a white detective in a black world, is drawn inexorably into the realm of Sugar Hill and the Armstrong, where almost everybody, except for the real-estate developers, seems locked in the past.

Working to solve the murders, Artie tries desperately to win Lily back. Blood Count is a murder mystery, a love story, and a tale about New York, race, real estate, money, and music, with an ending one could never predict.

Solve another case with Artie Cohen.©2010 Reggie Nadelson (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Nadelson has few peers at incorporating a strong whodunit plot into a contemporary police inquiry, but her real strength is Cohen himself, a tortured but sympathetic soul whose close relationships are never straightforward.” (Publishers Weekly)

"Reggie Nadelson has a real feel for the sources of life in the New York neighborhoods she celebrates in her vibrant mysteries featuring Artie Cohen, a Russian-born detective who knows the city with the intimacy of a lover." (Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review)

Really like this series

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I recommend this series. I have gotten attached to the characters and enjoy hearing them in each series. My only negative comment is although the narrator is able to capture unique voices for the different main characters in each story, but anyone with an accent tends to sound Russian. This is a bit annoying, when someone with a Hispanic name comes off sounding like they are from Russia.