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Nick Delvecchio #1
No Exit from Brooklyn
When Brooklyn private investigator Nick Delvecchio is asked by beautiful Jody Hayworth to help find a priceless piece of art, he must avoid tangling with the head of Brooklyn's mafia.
- GenresMystery
Hardcover
Published February 1, 2002
About the author
Robert J. Randisi
242 books107 followersRobert Joseph Randisi was a prolific American author, editor, and screenwriter, best known for his work in detective and Western fiction. He wrote over 650 books, including The Gunsmith series under the pen name J.R. Roberts, and edited more than 30 anthologies. A co-founder of Mystery Scene magazine, the American Crime Writers League, and Western Fictioneers, he also established The Private Eye Writers of America and created the Shamus Award. Randisi collaborated on novels with Eileen Davidson and Vince Van Patten, and created memorable characters such as Miles Jacoby, Joe Keough, and The Rat Pack. He received multiple lifetime achievement awards and the John Seigenthaler Humanitarian Award.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 17, 2022
“Forget the whole thing.”
Awaken in the middle of the night and with no further clarification forthcoming, private detective Nick Delvecchio gives his anonymous caller a traditional smartass answer and returns to sleep. By the next day, with the appearance of a new client, he quickly comes to understand at least part of the warning. It’s an intriguing opening to what might be an interesting case. Abruptly and unceremoniously, it is shunted to the side--and Randisi won’t be getting back to it anytime soon. The book is the better for it.
It turns out what is even more intriguing is Delvecchio’s family and friends. You would want to follow these characters even if a family crisis had not suddenly erupted. The crisis itself is one of the worst kind: a situation where there is absolutely nothing anybody can do to help. His sister, a year into a loveless marriage, decides to take a week away from her life to consider her options. On the way home from Grease, her plane is hijacked. In the world of 1987 this means the family can only get information from CBS News.
Helplessness tends to magnify underlying feelings. Stress leads to breaks; fractures become fissures; and, yes, the opposite also arises: affection begets compassion. It serves to emphasize that only family could bring such an eclectic group into each other’s orbit. Nick is an ex-cop forced out when one time too many he met violence with excessive violence. His brother is a priest. His father is an old-world Italian, stuck in his ways. His godfather is an actual Godfather, a high ranking Mafioso. His oldest brother, killed in Vietnam, still haunts his family. And then there’s Delvecchio’s neighbor, a pretty young woman who writes romance novels. And the borough of Brooklyn, as vivid as any character in the novel.
The cases inserts itself here and there as the family crisis continues until, if only to distract himself from his sister’s plight, Delvecchio attacks it full force. And truth be told, the mystery is not much different than anything you would encounter viewing episodic TV from the 70s or 80s. These characters are not as deftly drawn and the action seems to exist only to provide Delvecchio’s hardboiled bona fides. While the investigation is not dull, nor is it particularly engrossing; just steady, workmanlike, where the continuing tour of Brooklyn is by far the most interesting part.
Robert J. Randisi, the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, provides plenty of in-jokes for fans of the genre. He meets up with one of his other detective and discusses a third. When Delvecchio needs some information from the Boston area, he talks to some guy named John Francis Cuddy*. And his “rabbi” in the police department just happened to be named Ed Gorman, who in real life, like Randisi, was a prolific writer of western and detective novels.
I’m still undecided on how I fell about Randisi’s work. I’ve read his first Miles Jacobi novel and the killer turned out to be someone who made no real impression when we initially encounter him. Also, Jacobi’s supporting cast does not contain one character as interesting as those we meet in No Exit from Brooklyn. It was a disappointment. Randisi clearly lacks Loren D. Estleman’s ability to keep us engaged when the detective has no emotional investment in the case. I’m thankful that I’d read this novel first. The other way around, Jacobi first, I may never have met Nick and his family. Nick's everyday life provides all the emotional investment needed.
* John Francis Cuddy was the PI of the late Jeremiah Healy.
Awaken in the middle of the night and with no further clarification forthcoming, private detective Nick Delvecchio gives his anonymous caller a traditional smartass answer and returns to sleep. By the next day, with the appearance of a new client, he quickly comes to understand at least part of the warning. It’s an intriguing opening to what might be an interesting case. Abruptly and unceremoniously, it is shunted to the side--and Randisi won’t be getting back to it anytime soon. The book is the better for it.
It turns out what is even more intriguing is Delvecchio’s family and friends. You would want to follow these characters even if a family crisis had not suddenly erupted. The crisis itself is one of the worst kind: a situation where there is absolutely nothing anybody can do to help. His sister, a year into a loveless marriage, decides to take a week away from her life to consider her options. On the way home from Grease, her plane is hijacked. In the world of 1987 this means the family can only get information from CBS News.
Helplessness tends to magnify underlying feelings. Stress leads to breaks; fractures become fissures; and, yes, the opposite also arises: affection begets compassion. It serves to emphasize that only family could bring such an eclectic group into each other’s orbit. Nick is an ex-cop forced out when one time too many he met violence with excessive violence. His brother is a priest. His father is an old-world Italian, stuck in his ways. His godfather is an actual Godfather, a high ranking Mafioso. His oldest brother, killed in Vietnam, still haunts his family. And then there’s Delvecchio’s neighbor, a pretty young woman who writes romance novels. And the borough of Brooklyn, as vivid as any character in the novel.
The cases inserts itself here and there as the family crisis continues until, if only to distract himself from his sister’s plight, Delvecchio attacks it full force. And truth be told, the mystery is not much different than anything you would encounter viewing episodic TV from the 70s or 80s. These characters are not as deftly drawn and the action seems to exist only to provide Delvecchio’s hardboiled bona fides. While the investigation is not dull, nor is it particularly engrossing; just steady, workmanlike, where the continuing tour of Brooklyn is by far the most interesting part.
Robert J. Randisi, the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, provides plenty of in-jokes for fans of the genre. He meets up with one of his other detective and discusses a third. When Delvecchio needs some information from the Boston area, he talks to some guy named John Francis Cuddy*. And his “rabbi” in the police department just happened to be named Ed Gorman, who in real life, like Randisi, was a prolific writer of western and detective novels.
I’m still undecided on how I fell about Randisi’s work. I’ve read his first Miles Jacobi novel and the killer turned out to be someone who made no real impression when we initially encounter him. Also, Jacobi’s supporting cast does not contain one character as interesting as those we meet in No Exit from Brooklyn. It was a disappointment. Randisi clearly lacks Loren D. Estleman’s ability to keep us engaged when the detective has no emotional investment in the case. I’m thankful that I’d read this novel first. The other way around, Jacobi first, I may never have met Nick and his family. Nick's everyday life provides all the emotional investment needed.
* John Francis Cuddy was the PI of the late Jeremiah Healy.
June 16, 2023
I'm a big fan of Randisi's Rat Pack Mysteries.
This is the first book of his that I've read, not from that series
In many ways, it's a standard P.I. mystery.
Nick Delvecchio is an ex cop turned P.I., living and working in Brooklyn.
This was written in 1987,and has a subplot about a plane being highjacked.
I was 19 in 87, and I remember well that planes being highjacked was a thing.
But it's been so long, that this subplot kind of took me out of the story for a bit.
But I did enjoy the story, and will read the next in the series.
This is the first book of his that I've read, not from that series
In many ways, it's a standard P.I. mystery.
Nick Delvecchio is an ex cop turned P.I., living and working in Brooklyn.
This was written in 1987,and has a subplot about a plane being highjacked.
I was 19 in 87, and I remember well that planes being highjacked was a thing.
But it's been so long, that this subplot kind of took me out of the story for a bit.
But I did enjoy the story, and will read the next in the series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 3, 2019
Cant wait to read the second book
April 18, 2017
Not bad.... But boring nonetheless for a detective novel
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews