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Title/Author

Manhattan Is My Beat

Jeffery Deaver

Average Review Rating Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : Coronet

Published : 1988

Copyright : Jeffery Deaver 1988

ISBN-10 : PB 0-340-79311-2
ISBN-13 : PB 978-0-340-79311-4

Publisher's Write-Up

Five feet two inches of slick repartee, near-purple hair, and poetic imagination, twenty-year-old Rune hasn't been in Manhattan for very long. But she's crafty enough to have found a squatter's paradise in an empty TriBeCa loft, and a video store job that feeds her passion for old movies. It's a passion she shares with her favorite customer, Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same video over and over. The flick is a noir classic based on a real-life unsolved bank heist and a million missing dollars. It's called Manhattan Is My Beat.

That's the tape Rune is picking up from Mr. Kelly's shabby apartment when she finds him shot to death and Rune is certain the key to solving the murder is hidden somewhere in the hazy, black-and-white frames of Mr. Kelly's beloved movie…

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Reader Reviews

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Review by Chrissi (010102) Rating (8/10)

Review by Chrissi
Rating 8/10
This is one of Deavers earlier books, the back catalogue of which are all being reprinted, and it was nice to come across this one. This one is not a Lincoln Rhyme story, it stands alone, and it is actually very different to those others that I have read.

Manhattan Is My Beat is the name of an old black and white film that was based on a true crime that happened years before. Rune is a video store assistant, whose friend is an old man with whom she talks about films and who keeps renting the film, so rather than having him rent it, she tapes it for him and takes it to him. When she gets there, she finds that someone has killed the nice old man, and she decides that the reason for this is this old film, and that he was involved in the original robbery and knows where the money has been hidden.

Rune is funny, naive and streetwise all at the same time, and the path that she chooses to solving the murder brings her into contact with some rather unsavoury characters, but it all serves to keep her going in the same direction, rather than scaring her off. She loses her job over it all, but will not be deterred, quite endearing really.

Of course there is a twist, and it is really not what you expect, in fact there are more than one surprise for you if you read this, it just goes to show that Mr D was writing excellent books for his American audience years before they published him here, sad, really...
Chrissi (1st January 2002)

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