Con Lehane's THE RED SCARE MURDERS delivers a retro private investigator yarn written in the bang-bang, first-person 1950's and '60's style of Mickey Spillane's "Mike Hammer" series. RED SCARE is so clearly Lehane's homage to Hammer that its protagonist, Mick Mulligan, combines Spillane's first name with what the golfing community calls a "do-over," i.e. a "Mulligan!" Tasked with saving Harold Williams, a union organizer convicted of murder, from Sing-Sing's death row, Mick's only hope is to find the real murderer -- and he has only two weeks to do it. Like all hard-bitten PI's, he must deal with a whole crew of two-bit punks, bully-boy strike breakers, bent cops, babes, and guys with names like "Fat Tony." Layered on top of that is J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which is hot on the trail of perceived communists among the unions. These are the years of America's "Red Scare," so Williams might have been railroaded to become a martyr in the communist cause. Is Mick, himself, a commie? Lovers of the gritty PI novels in the style of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Michael Shayne, and, of course, Mike Hammer, won't want to miss THE RED SCARE MURDERS.

“You know what a witch hunt is? It’s when a big lie declaring someone anathema to the prevailing orthodoxy gets a head of steam…,” explains narrator Mick Mulligan. It’s July 1950, and the country is in the grips of anti-communist “Red Scare” fever. Blacklisted from his job as a Disney cartoonist, Mick is back in New York, divorced, broke, and starting as a private detective to pay child support. But his first case may prove impossible to solve. A year and half earlier, Irwin Johnson, a despised cab company owner, was shot to death in his garage office. Evidence pointed to Black cab driver and Communist Party member Harold Williams, who had led a wildcat strike against Johnson’s company a month before the murder. Tried and convicted, Harold sits in Sing Sing prison, awaiting execution on August 4. Now, labor leader Duke Rogowski wants Mick to find new evidence to exonerate Harold. The problem is that Mick only has 15 days. In the best hardboiled noir tradition, our gumshoe doggedly pursues clues and reluctant witnesses like sexy femme fatale widow Eva Johnson (think Lana Turner) while fending off Mob goons named Moose. If Lehane’s (Murder at the College Library) red-herring plot twists don’t always make sense, his gritty portrait of 1950s New York rings true. While there is only one actual murder, the novel vividly depicts the McCarthyism that destroyed so many lives. A treat for noir and historical mystery fans..