Love the Stranger

 

 Love the Stranger (A Queens Mystery) by Michael Sears is a murder mystery that takes place in Queens, NY. Although it’s his first book reviewed in this blog, it is the second novel in the Queens Mystery series and at least his ninth crime novel. It was published in 2024. Sears described Queens as being a community that was far more than just a melting pot of people from all corners of the world who were just trying to eke out a living. Sears wrote that Queens was a “kaleidoscope of colors, classes, and ethnicities.” The book includes a great cast of characters including Kenzie Zielinski, a woman who worked as a community organizer. Currently she had taken on a wealthy and well-placed man in Queens who wanted to build a skyscraper which she thought would destroy the quality of the neighborhood. She lived with her boyfriend Ted Molloy, a lawyer with a most colorful past, and his law partner, Lester Young McKinley. They all shared and office and sometimes employed Mohammed, a Yemini immigrant to be their driver. Hanging over all the immigrants was the presence of ICE.

 

In addition to her work to defeat the building of the skyscraper, Kenzie was pulled into a murder mystery when it was obvious that the lawyer that Mohammed’s lawyer who was supposed to be helping with his immigration status was just cheating him out of fees, and claimed that Mohammed still owed him an impossible debt of $1,000. When Kenzie went to the law office of Howard Spitzer, she found Spitzer on the floor having been shot. Although she called the cops, since she was thought to be the last one who had seen Spitzer alive, she became a prime suspect in this matter. Ted and Lester were managing the lawsuit that Kenzie had filed against the landowner Ron Reisner, and their efforts were complicated when it was discovered a mole had been working in their office, and she was leaking their plans to Reisner’s people.

 

Sears introduced more characters on both sides of this matter, so there were additional subplots, all of which he brought to a satisfying end. I haven’t even gotten to Lester’s decision to loan money to a mobster. This book was hard to put down, so I had a couple late nights as I was caught up in the plot and characters. That’s enough information to help you know why I’m now a fan of Michael Sears. I’m not sure which of his earlier book I’ll grab next, but I plan to read more of his work.