Carol Lea Benjamin The Hard Way

The Hard Way

Carol Lea Benjamin

Morrow, Sep 26 2006, $23.95

ISBN: 0060539038

Successful Owner of GR Leather on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, designer Gardner Redstone is in the subway when he falls onto the tracks just as a train arrived. Seven witnesses inform the police he was pushed. However, they do not agree on much more than that the culprit was a tall homeless male. The cops fail to find the killer who they assume is a maniac.

Gardner's daughter Eleanor hires dog trainer and private investigator Rachel Alexander to uncover the truth and identify her dad's killer. To do so Rachel goes undercover as Eunice a bag lady. However, at first she learns how to survive being homeless when a veteran mentors her. That does not help solve the case nor does interviewing the seven though their eyewitness accounts begin to unravel. At GR Leather she learns two employees recently died, which makes the sleuth and her canine partner Dashiell wonder if the killer's motive was not a loose maniacal frenzy, but a disguised cleverly handled homicide related to the upscale leather business.

The whodunit and why takes a back seat to the comparisons between the two Manhattans; that of the wealthy vs. that of the street poor though a forced application of Thomas Carlisle's theory on the clothing of man takes somewhat away from the urinated formalwear compared with high quality leather. Rachel and Dashiell are at their very best when she meets the homeless Vet who though a bit off center teaches her the ropes of street survival. The murder mystery is fun to follow, but the interrogation of seven witnesses to the same event becomes a bit weary even if each sees things different. Still overall this is a fascinating tale as Rachel and the reader learns first hand what its like to walk in the ripped sneakers of a homeless person.

Harriet Klausner