Read @ Joe’s

Title: Sleepless City (2023)  
Author: Reed Farrel Coleman  
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing  

Book jacket: Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud. He doesn't wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York. Nick Ryan can find a criminal who's vanished. Or he can make a key witness disappear. He's a veteran cop still fighting his own private war. He's a soldier of the streets with his own personal code. 

Joe says: Sleepless City is a fun, fast, crime-genre read... that uses every single trope the medium has to offer.

Sleepless City has been labeled in various press releases as “fast-paced” and a “tension builder” and those descriptions are entirely accurate. Sleepless City is indeed a fun, fast, crime-genre read. The book also uses every single trope the medium has to offer. Reed Farrel Coleman mixes those ingredients into a tasty blend but the distinct lack of originality in both plot and style waters down the cocktail into a sugary mess.  

Introduced within is NYPD detective Nick Ryan. Ryan is something of a fixer. When the city, or the force, or (of course) a cute reporter faces a particularly nasty dilemma, Ryan is called in. He can make photos disappear or calls unlisted numbers holding unlisted favors. Yet Sleepless City is also Ryan’s origin story. Coleman tells the tale of how Nick is recruited by an elite institution within the walls of City Hall where his honor, street smarts, and (of course) good looks can benefit all of the Five Boroughs.  

Nick’s first assignment is to cover up a housing project shooting that went wrong. Then he hunts a dirty financier who has stolen NYPD pension money – a financier who is already incarcerated and ain’t talking. Uh-oh. 

Coleman makes Nick Ryan a likeable guy. He has Captain America morals with the Punisher’s instincts. He’s the right guy in the wrong place. Yet the set up? His actions? Reactions? Everything?

Has all. 

Been done. 

Before. 

He drives a classic muscle car. 

His father was unfairly branded a traitor. 

He has a hot ex-wife whose social station orbits on interplanetary levels. 

His friend is an Irish bartender with a (wait for it) mysterious past. 

He has access to the slickest hacker on the Internet.  

And I’m pretty sure he already has a five-season deal with Taylor Sheridan for Paramount+. 

Hey, look. A wise baseball player once talked about learning your clichés. He said to know them; they’re your friends. Coleman has taken this as gospel. And he makes a good preacher within his religion. He is also sermonizing to a one-tune choir.  

Coleman does know how to punch up the action and throw in some hard-boiled motions. Ryan and one of his operatives take down a rather nasty serial rapist in a rather satisfying way. Coleman also gets poetic on comparing the rhythm of the streets to classical, jazz, and punk rock – and gets it right.  

Above all, Coleman knows that Sleepless City is pure escapism; his tempo is a success. Sleepless City is a fun novel to read into the wee hours of the night.  

If only the main beats were more original so that it wouldn’t fade away in the morning fog.  

Or get lost in a wet ring on a table in a dive bar.  

Or soaked up by the sounds of the city that never sleeps.  

You can choose the cliché.  

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Thanks all around to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the advanced read along with a New York state of mind.