Ex-cop Filomena Buscarsela, recovered from the troubles that dogged her in The Glass Factory (2000), brings her sharp tongue and sharper mind back to New York City in this slightly confusing tale. Here she's serving an apprenticeship at an established PI firm, but her cases tend to cost the firm nearly as much as she brings in. Always fighting for the underdog, Buscarsela finds herself helping an elderly Hispanic woman whose son is missing, and another woman whose husband, in a moment of insanity, drew a gun on five police officers in a crowd. Breaking a bootlegging ring gets Buscarsela money, but it gets her shot at as well. Her biggest case involves the apparent mugging of Manny Morales, a guy who worked with developmentally disabled children, but was better known as an agitator for tenants' rights. The somewhat tangled thread that ties together Buscarsela's cases is an old factory building that's been occupied by squatters for the past 10 years. This motley if basically responsible group of tenants provides Buscarsela with useful information, sometimes inadvertently, but it's the building itself that holds the most important key. An engaging character with an intimidating determination and at times an over-the-top exuberance, Buscarsela balances a fierce personality with an appealing manner toward her 12-year-old daughter, Antonia, and a wry sense of humor. The jam-packed plot makes for an exciting story, but the disparate sideshows are difficult to keep straight, and Wishnia plays the ethnicity card a little too often. (Nov. 12) FYI: Wishnia's first novel, 23 Shades of Black, was nominated for an Edgar. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Filomena Buscarsela (The Glass Factory, 2000, etc.) is one busy muchacha these days. To make a better living (and maybe move herself and her 12-year-old daughter Antonia out of their single room and into a real apartment), she's decided to earn her p.i. license, so she hires herself out to Davis and Brown, a detective agency in the heart of ethnic Queens. Her fluent Spanish puts her first on call for the most thankless cases, like the disappearance of Pablo Muñoz, who left his mother for migrant farm work in Suffolk County and never came back, and the search for Fred Lopez, the fire equipment inspector who certified the equipment at P.S. 112 safe two weeks before it blew up. Fil's natural curiosity gets her into other cases, like the that of Sonny Tesoro, one of the squatters living in a self-renovated factory who one day, for no apparent reason, brandished a loaded gun at six of NYPD's finest and got himself thrown into the slammer, leaving his wife and baby alone and penniless. And she even draws an occasional non-Hispanic mystery like the theft of videotapes from the Dvrushnik factory. But the case that really hooks her is the beating death of housing activist Manny Morales: a fatality the mayor's office is ready to write off as just another random street crime unless Fil can prove otherwise. A good, though not a great, read. Still, anyone who's lived in non-rent-controlled apartment will doubtless respond to Fil's search for truth, justice, and affordable housing.
