I read this at the recommendation of a book club and was pleasantly surprised. John March, young investigator and grieving widower, is drawn into an case where nothing is as it seems. Guilt and mystery surround all parties and John is nearly offed several times by ???? The New York atmosphere is well-captured. March's strange, past misfortunes are slowly revealed, balanced by his boyish exuberance and potential new love interest. I found him a likable fellow, though some of the attorney and FBI agent characterizations were exaggerated and the author had a peculiar need to describe everyone's clothing in exquisite detail -- The ending, of course, is not what you expect. Not a heavy book, like some of the Grisham novels, but fun. Will read more in the series.

Black Maps
Very good example of the private eye in the big city without the gunplay and other trappings that are so popular otherwise. A believable protagonist and a workable plot without the literary devices.

Knopf doesn't publish just anyone's first novel, much less a PI mystery. Not hard to see why they signed Peter Spiegelman - he's as good as Michael Connelly. Black Maps is an amazingly mature work, without the usual reservation "for a first novel." It's engrossing from the first page to the last. Spiegelman's writing never gets in the reader's way - it's never self-conscious or - fatal for a mystery - transparently tricky, coy, or cute. It's a real story - the characters that carry the plot are alive and interesting without exception, and even the minor characters at the second and third levels have energy. A wonderful, wonderful piece of writing. Spiegelman has a place among the mystery writers who are master craftsmen - Connelly, Robert B. Parker, Tony Hillerman (at his best), et al. But he's much more than a word wizard; his books have soul.

I read a lot of mysteries, and I am really quite impressed with Peter Spiegelman's writing ability. For a first novel, BLACK MAPS is extremely well written. I think Spielgelman's prose can stand toe-to-toe with some of the best writers in the business right now.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Spiegelman's plotting. BLACK MAPS is a pretty slow moving PI novel, and the first two thirds of the book is little more than a lengthy set-up piece that lacks any sort of momentum. But once you hit the last third of this book, BLACK MAPS becomes quite thrilling and enjoyable. But I must admit that I almost gave up on the book before this point.

Spiegelman is also way too fond of description. In BLACK MAPS, he describes almost everyone and everything in almost excruciating detail. People, clothing, rooms, architecture, business transactions, geographical locations -- you name it. He's actually very good at doing this, but I felt it really slowed down the momentum of the plot, at least for me.

In short, Spiegelman is a superb writer with huge potential, but I wouldn't recommend this novel to someone looking for a page turner.

Three and a half stars.

I saw good reviews of the third novel in this series, and not being the sort of person to start in the middle of something, I went back and found this one -- apparently his first novel of any kind. And as a first, it's not bad. The protagonist is John March, born into a moderately wealthy New York banking family (all his siblings work for the company his grandfather founded), who fell in love his senior year in college with the daughter of an upstate sheriff, followed her home after graduation, and became a deputy for his father-in-law. Then she was killed -- the author was right not to overdo the backstory -- and March came back to Manhattan, where he became a PI. Now three years have passed, he's still not really over the trauma, and he's sort of floating through life. Through a lawyer friend, he gets involved in a blackmail case involving a collapsed bank (think international money-laundering on a huge scale) now in liquidation. The plot is well thought out, due undoubtedly to the author's own background in international banking and the design of financial software, and the complications are nicely explained for the uninitiated. The pace in the early part of the book is rather slow, though, and except for a couple of isolated scenes, it doesn't really pick up until eighty percent of the way through. Then he really lets out the clutch. The dialogue is well done, as are the characters, though Spiegelman could spend less time describing each passing individual and their attire in such minute detail; at least he stops short of quoting the laundry instructions tag. It's a very promising beginning, though, and I'll be following this series from now on.