Rejection - a Lou Drake Mystery by Thomas K. Matthews

This is a classic crime novel, one that was written for our genre at Men Reading Books. Matthews has created a compelling character in Lou Drake, an NYPD detective who was once the golden boy of the detective squad. However, 10 years earlier, Drake was involved in a very high profile murder case that looked like a slam dunk against a wealthy mover-shaker type guy, until the last second before court when the case fell apart as witnesses started changing their testimony and an unlikely lowlife criminal confessed. Accused of wrong doing in the case, Drake was demoted to patrol where he was supposed to live out his career on the police force until his retirement and pension. Currently, Drake was bitter and broken. With only six months to go before retirement, in the midst of drowning in self-pity, Drake screwed up in his basic role at a new crime scene. Captain Andrade decided that the only way to keep Drake from being fired and losing his pension was to put him in the booking cage where he was not apparently a risk to anyone. That transfer did not quite work out like Andrade expected.

Meanwhile, there were two important subplots that were developed by Matthews. First, as another factor in his depression/failure, Drake had tried to write a crime-cop novel that had been rejected by every publisher, and he became a part of a writers’ group who had similar frustrations. It’s one thing to finish a book and it’s another to get it in print. Second, a serial murderer was at work, and the killer was targeting literary agents in one NYNY neighborhood. Matthews successfully brought the several plotlines to a fitting and exciting conclusion that I did not see coming until the end of the book.

This reviewer can only guess that Matthews must have been frustrated with his own efforts to find a literary agent and to get published, so there is a strong undercurrent of humor as one agent after another is gruesomely murdered. Rejection is a good book which gets my recommendation, and I hope to see another Lou Drake book. It was a book that I stayed up too late to finish, and if Matthews can produce more works like this, he has a good chance of landing in our “power rotation” of authors.