Brooklyn Secrets: An Erica Donato Mystery

By Triss Stein

Erica Donato, Brooklyn girl, urban history grad student and single mom, is researching the 1930s when Brownsville was the home of the notorious organized criminals the newspapers called Murder Inc. She quickly learns that even in rapidly changing Brooklyn, Brownsville remains much as it was. It is still poor, it is still tough, and it still breeds fighters and gangs.

Doing field research, Erica stops in at the landmark local library and meets Savanna, a young woman who is the pride of her mother and her bosses, and headed for an elite college and a future. A few days later, Savanna is found beaten and left for dead. Her anguished mother is everywhere, insisting someone knows something. After a massive, angry demonstration, a young girlfriend of Savanna’s is found dead, too. Is there a connection? Did perfect Savanna have a few secrets?

Erica’s curious. But she’s focused on the 1930s and has located a few women who are happy to share memories. Two are childhood friends who disagree on much but guard secrets, too—ones kept for a lifetime. Never one to resist looking deeper than her research requires, Erica keeps encountering an apparent derelict white man, a vengeful rejected girlfriend, the role of boxing as a way out of poverty, and fading evidence of long-ago crimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781464204135

Triss Stein

Triss Stein is a small-town girl who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the useful double vision of a stranger and a resident which she uses to write mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Legacies is the fifth Erica Donato mystery, following Brooklyn Bones, Brooklyn Graves, Brooklyn Secrets, and Brooklyn Wars.

Reviews for Brooklyn Secrets

[mandolin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished this a few days ago and put off writing my review so I could think about this one.I did enjoy reading this mystery, and finished it in two days. It kept my interest and the pacing was good. There were several notable characters in the book and I enjoyed them all. Interestingly enough, I feel like the one that was least fleshed out was the lead character of Erica. It would have been nice to learn more about the issues in her past, helping us learn more about her.One of the things that bugged me in this book was her own personal lack of interest in who the body in the wall is and how it got there. Her daughter has to keep encouraging her to get more information. While other things are going on during this time frame, I know if a body was discovered in the wall of my home, I would be obsessed with finding out who it belonged to and how it came to be there. This seems to be in the back of her mind. These are probably nit-picky things on my part, however. The mystery was well set up, the characters were diverse and interesting, and the ending was satisfying. Good read.

[cherilove · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting - a crouched skeleton found inside a wall while remodeling - paired, in my opinion, with the wrong protagonist. This should have been a police procedural, not written from the perspective of an amateur sleuth.

[cathyskye · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

First Line: It began with a sobbing phone call from my daughter, the kind of call every parent dreads.Erica Donato's teenage daughter, Chris, has been helping the contractor with the renovations on their old Brooklyn brownstone. She calls her mother in hysteria because she just found a skeleton when tearing down an old wall. The skeleton is of a young girl, and from the looks of the other items with her, she's been holding her teddy bear since sometime in the 1970s. The police seem to think that Erica and Chris should have no interest in this long-dead girl, but Chris becomes increasingly focused on learning her identity. When the house is broken into, Erica-- a young widow and over-age history Ph.D candidate who's an intern in a local history museum-- sends her daughter off to art camp to get her out of harm's way. But it becomes crystal clear that, as much as Chris wants the young girl identified, someone else is willing to kill to keep the dead girl a Jane Doe.This book has a fascinating setting, letting us get to know both present-day Brooklyn as well as some of its colorful history, and I also enjoyed reading about the work Erica does for the local museum. The cast of characters is colorful, especially the grumpy old reporter who reluctantly decides to help Erica in her search for information about the girl. Erica's daughter Chris is a typical teenager awash in hormones. From one paragraph to the next, you never know when it's time to hug her to bits... or to pretend that she's temporarily insane.For all its strengths, however, I had two problems with Brooklyn Bones. One concerns the mystery itself. I had a difficult time believing that the bad guys would go to such extremes to cover up an old crime when the police didn't seem to be all that interested in solving it. The second problem I had is with the main character herself. Although her behavior is often summed up as "the Brooklyn coming out in her," it usually felt more like a flaky sort of bravado-- over the top, often ill-advised, and sometimes inappropriate. Since I don't know anyone from Brooklyn, this behavior of Erica's may be right on the money, but I do have my doubts. However, I did want to shake her until her teeth rattled over one thing in particular. Her house had been broken into, someone close to her had been murdered, and a family friend had insisted that Chris be sent to art camp to get her out of harm's way. So what does she do when Chris wants to come home for a few days in the middle of all this? Erica lets her come back! The "female in jeopardy" scenario (often referred to as "fem jep") where a female stupidly puts her life in danger (or in this case, her daughter's life) is one that I do not like, and I liked it even less in this book since it involved a mother dealing with her child's safety.All that being said, I did find a lot to like about this book, and I'm curious to read the next book in the series. Hopefully Erica will part ways with the dreaded fem jep!