The Jack Leightner Crime Novels Series

A floating coffin draws Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner into a murder investigation in hidden parts of New York Harbor and the old Brooklyn Navy Yard in this second novel in Edgar Award finalist Gabriel Cohen’s acclaimed crime series. At a bed and breakfast in upstate New York, Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner is doing his best to propose to his girlfriend. When the hotel staff loses the engagement ring, romance is put on hold and Leightner returns to Brooklyn to tangle once more with death. A boy has been found floating by the Red Hook pier in a handmade coffin that suggests a burial at sea. But when a second victim turns up, Leightner senses a vile pattern. The last time he worked Red Hook, the old waterfront was a ghost town. Now, gentrification is reshaping the quiet cobblestoned streets, with big-box stores and condos being built where longshoremen once lived, worked, loved, and died. But even in this shiny new Brooklyn, Leightner knows, there are corners where darkness reigns. The Graving Dock is the 2nd book in the Jack Leightner Crime Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. 

Four hard-boiled mysteries follow a homicide detective through the grit and grime of Brooklyn’s criminal dark side, from an Edgar Award–nominated author.   As a member of the elite Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force, Det. Jack Leightner never shies away from a case, no matter how dangerous or baffling. And Kings County has plenty of work for him . . .   Red Hook: In the Edgar Award–nominated series debut, a hardworking family man’s body is found on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. As Leightner searches for the killer in Red Hook, the neighborhood of his youth, he must also face ghosts from his past as well as the man he’s become . . .   The Graving Dock: A boy is found floating near the Red Hook pier—inside a handmade coffin. With leads taking him all over New York Harbor, and a shady partner in tow, Leightner fights to keep his head above water . . .   Neptune Avenue: Leightner investigates the serial killings of prostitutes in Crown Heights and the murder of a friend who ran afoul of the Russian mob in Brighton Beach. But even more dangerous is the detective’s growing attraction to his friend’s widow . . .   The Ninth Step: A visit from a stranger forces Jack to reopen the forty-year-old case of his brother’s murder. Meanwhile, he’s distracted by a death at a deli, but after discovering the killer’s ties to a potential terrorist cell, Jack won’t rest until both cases are closed.

Edgar Award Finalist: In the first novel of the Jack Leightner crime series, the Brooklyn homicide detective investigates a perplexing murder in dangerous terrain: the rundown neighborhood of his youth. Unlike the other members of the elite Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force, Detective Jack Leightner prefers his murders baffling. He likes to lose himself in tough cases, and he has just caught a murder that will consume him like no other: an unidentified body, bound execution style, on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. Leightner is finishing his first look at the corpse when he discovers a knife wound and loses his lunch. He has seen a thousand dead bodies, but nothing brings back bad memories like death by knife. The victim was a hardworking Dominican man with a family, a job, and no ties to the underworld. Investigating this murder will suck Leightner back into Red Hook, the neighborhood of his youth—now a labyrinth of empty docks and crumbling housing projects. It’s a tough case, but not half as hard as going home. Red Hook is the 1st book in the Jack Leightner Crime Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

In this fourth novel in Edgar Award finalist Gabriel Cohen’s acclaimed crime series, Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner reopens the case of his brother’s death four decades later. Cutting class, young Jack Leightner and his brother, Petey, are playing near the Brooklyn waterfront when they find a hidden case of Scotch. They are carrying it home when two teenagers from outside the neighborhood stop them and demand they hand over the booze. Jack refuses, and one of the muggers draws a knife, changing Jack’s life forever. Forty years later, now a veteran of the elite Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force, Leightner still has not come to grips with that fateful day in Red Hook. He is making breakfast one morning when a man appears on his doorstep and introduces himself as Petey’s killer. Leightner could arrest him, but the man makes him a deal: Let me go and I’ll tell you the real reason I stabbed your brother. As Leightner digs into the hidden causes of his family tragedy, he finds his brother’s murder was about much more than a case of Scotch. The Ninth Step is the 4th book in the Jack Leightner Crime Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

A floating coffin draws Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner into a murder investigation in hidden parts of New York Harbor and the old Brooklyn Navy Yard in this second novel in Edgar Award finalist Gabriel Cohen’s acclaimed crime series. At a bed and breakfast in upstate New York, Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner is doing his best to propose to his girlfriend. When the hotel staff loses the engagement ring, romance is put on hold and Leightner returns to Brooklyn to tangle once more with death. A boy has been found floating by the Red Hook pier in a handmade coffin that suggests a burial at sea. But when a second victim turns up, Leightner senses a vile pattern. The last time he worked Red Hook, the old waterfront was a ghost town. Now, gentrification is reshaping the quiet cobblestoned streets, with big-box stores and condos being built where longshoremen once lived, worked, loved, and died. But even in this shiny new Brooklyn, Leightner knows, there are corners where darkness reigns. The Graving Dock is the 2nd book in the Jack Leightner Crime Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.