BLACKSTONE AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Marooned in the United States, Inspector Sam Blackstone investigates the kidnapping of a business tycoon.

Since an attempt on his life seven years earlier, banker William Holt has lived in seclusion in his Coney Island mansion, running his business from an underground suite with the help of sons George and Harold. But one morning, his butler Fanshawe discovers the two Pinkerton agents guarding his employer brutally slain and the man known as the Wolf of Wall Street missing. Brooklyn’s Inspector Flynn is eager to catch such as high-profile case, but instead the NYPD sends East Ender Sam Blackstone and his upper-crust Connecticut protégé, Detective Sergeant Alex Meade. Blackstone, still on the trail of an English prisoner who escaped justice with a well-placed bribe (Blackstone and the New World, 2009, etc.), is the perfect fall guy if the Holt case turns sour, as it instantly does. First Fanshawe vanishes. The case against Edward Knox, the shooter whose initial assault sent Holt into hiding, goes south when vital evidence disappears. Flynn finds an informer but is shot when he follows his latest lead. Even the ransom drop is complicated by the kidnappers’ demand that meek Harold rather than solid George be the courier. As he hits a series of dead ends, Blackstone senses a plot more complicated than even cynical Irishman Flynn suspects.

The case of the banker in the bunker provides enough wit, puzzlement and class warfare to delight the most devoted Blackstone fan.