The Browser

”Just a murderer, not a monster“, Mary E. Sibley
Frankie Koehler had a criminal record and a youthful stretch of incarceration. In 1970 there was a double murder. A witness saw Frankie afterwards with a gun. Andy Rosenzweig had been one police officer who didn't want to sleep on the job when he joined the NYPD in the sixties. He found the active cops in the precinct and used them as teachers. He loved being a cop and an investigator. Frank Koehler was known to and feared by the Irish racketeers known as the Westies.

This cold case was not a glamor grudge. Koehler had changed his name to Frank O'Grady and had moved to California. Officers met him and he was arrested when he arrived in New York City via Amtrak. At the time of his arrest he was sixty eight years old. He was a refugee of sorts from the white hoodlum milieu of another time. He was a period piece, a West Side bad guy. One of Koehler's victims left four children. He showed a flicker of interest when this fact was related to him. Koehler's lawyer, Murray Richman, explained to the author that crime is immature behavior. The lawyer had worked as a social worker before becoming a lawyer. Koehler read THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA at Rikers Island. While growing up, he had modeled himself on Jimmy Cagney.

”not substantial enough“, smoothsoul
When I read Gourevitch's original article in The New Yorker on which the book is based, I was intrigued. It was in interesting story, well told. But the book seems padded and is occasionally boring (I skipped bits which I almost never do on principle). Worse, it doesn't seem that difficult or profound a case, and you start to question the original story. Really, not a lot happens, though there is a little insight into detection methods and the hoodlum milieu. Gourevitch is a good writer and journalist, but this shouldn't have been a book.

”The power of brevity“, James G. Greenhill

The most striking quality of this book to me is its brevity. "A Cold Case" is a first-rate example of a writer exercising immense discipline, self-control and deliberation with the craft. The book contains powerful character studies & strong sense of place. It seems Gourevitch considered every word & allowed none in that didn't help forward his Spartan story. Beautifully executed.

”Short, journalistic look into the reality of solving case...“, K. L Sadler
With all the attention given to solving 'cold' or old cases on television, I thought a quick read into a real cold case would be informative. It was. Television tends to condense into an hour the work of months or even years, without getting that information over to the viewer. The person who was motivated into picking up this cold case knew one of those killed, and he was an honest NY detective who felt he could not retire peacefully without trying to solve a couple of cases that had been put to the wayside because of lack of further information (not necessarily the fault of the original detectives on the case).

The book is very short, very concise, given the characters that this journalist-author met. This group included the defendant, the lawyer for the defense, the other cops that Rosenzweig involved in the search for the defendant, families on both sides, and others. An extremely interesting group...it was incredible the amount of rationalization that the killer used to explain away his murder of two men over what really was nothing. Other people were equally guilty of rationalizations including the wife and mistress of this man, and even the little town of Benecia in California, where he wound up hiding for years. Many tried to excuse his behavior by saying that he had lived a relatively good life, a helpful life during his time there. But he had never taken responsibility for those lives he had taken, or the impact on the families of those men.

The writing is what you would expect from someone who writes for the New Yorker. Warning: The amount of expletives used in this book is over the usual limit that I care to read. I guess it is to be expected for cops, just like it was and is in the military...if the journalist is being true to what he has taped and not just added for 'spice' to his writing, again, that is part of the journalism.

Karen Sadler

”Inaccurate Adjectives“, Beth
The review of this book on its inside flap is what got me. The review said the book is "intensely dramatic" (it's not) and "mesmerizing" (it's not). The flap says the book "carries us deep into the lives and minds" of the bad guy and the good guy. It doesn't.

This book actually reads like an abstract. As a result, I didn't find any the characters interesting, and I didn't feel particularly good or bad about any of them.

The reason I give this book three stars rather than one or two is that 1) it included pictures, and 2) the pictures weren't all stuck in the middle of the book but were each placed in its appropriate spot in the text.

Frank Koehler was only 15 when he shot a friend in the back for double-crossing him. That's the sort of guy he was--violent, Mob-connected, and remorse-free. In the same rough-and-tumble postwar neighborhood on Manhattan's West Side lived a very different young man: Andy Rosenzweig, rigorously straight and determined to become a policeman at a time when cops were more likely to be taking naps or bribes than nabbing criminals. Years later, in 1970, Koehler murdered two men after an argument in a restaurant. One of the victims was a friend of Rosenzweig's. It was a straightforward case, but in a typical show of the NYPD's ineptitude, the case was closed when someone decided to declare Koehler dead, allowing him to slip away.

Twenty-seven years after the murders, on the eve of Rosenzweig's retirement as chief of investigations, he reopened the case, determined not to leave without catching the murderer of his friend. Philip Gourevitch, who last examined murder in the award-winning We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, is more interested in the personalities of killers and those who pursue them than the drama of murder itself. As a result, A Cold Case is short on tension, but it is an excellent character study. Gourevitch immerses us in the "white hoodlum milieu of another time and from a city which no longer really exists," and he conjures up the particular moral universe of each character--Rosenzweig; murder victim Richie Glennon, an ex-prizefighter who walked the fence between the good guys and the bad guys; Murray Richman, the Mob-defending lawyer from the Bronx who likes murder cases because there's "one less witness to worry about"; and Koehler himself, now elderly but still unremorseful. Gourevitch's skillful handling raises intriguing contradictions and questions, not least this one Koehler asks about himself: "Why would people still think good of this asshole?" Now, that's a story. --Lesley Reed