{"id":8270,"date":"2019-12-03T06:46:36","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T11:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8270"},"modified":"2019-12-03T06:46:36","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T11:46:36","slug":"city-of-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8270","title":{"rendered":"****City of Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"snow<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Pobi \u2013 In a CrimeFictionLovers interview<\/a> with Robert Pobi about his 2012 debut novel Bloodman<\/em>, he revealed he\u2019d wanted to write an old-fashioned character-driven story. He\u2019s done it again with his new police procedural, City of Windows<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years before the start of this book, Dr. Lucas Page,\nastrophysicist, left his FBI career on uneasy terms after an accident with\nexplosives nearly killed him. He now has a prosthetic arm, a prosthetic leg,\nand one ceramic eye that doesn\u2019t quite track with the other. Page\u2019s challenges\nin dealing with the bionic parts of his body greatly increase the depth of his\ncharacter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now Page teaches at Columbia University in Manhattan. He\nthinks his students are generally lackluster, but then he has a jaded view of\nmost things. Except his family. His wife Erin is a pediatrician. They have five\nkids and a happy dog\u2014a ragtag collection of children \u201cwhose biological parents\nhad failed them and the system had given up on.\u201d The family interactions\nprovide a nice balance to the story\u2019s crime elements, though the kids are\npossibly too cooperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the university\u2019s semester closes out for the Christmas\nholiday, a huge blizzard is under way. Many blocks south in midtown Manhattan, a\nbizarre shooting has occurred, and the news reports show Page\u2019s old FBI\ncolleagues working the case. The victim was in a moving vehicle, shot from a\nhigh angle from a considerable distance. Identifying the sniper\u2019s nest will be\ndifficult. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Page has an uncanny ability to plot bullet\ntrajectories and lines of sight, that evening\u2019s visit from his former FBI supervisor,\nthough unwelcome, is not unexpected. The Bureau is involved because the dead\nman was one of their own, Page\u2019s former partner. Page\u2019s uncanny ability, though\nrusty, still works\u2014automatic, instinctive, and unexplainable. He identifies a\nbuilding almost eight football fields away from the point of impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old jealousies arise, family needs pull at him, his former\nsupervisor is as opaque as ever, there\u2019s political pressure to pin the shooting\non a Muslim extremist, without any evidence, and Page is not on a track that\nwill make him friends, but when a second law enforcement officer is\nassassinated a mere thirteen hours later, any hope evaporates that the first\nagent\u2019s death was a fluke. In his heart of hearts, Page loves this work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second victim was shot on the semi-crowded tram that operates between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan, moving at almost eighteen miles an hour, through the continuing snowstorm, from a distance of almost a half-mile. Another impossible shot. And again, Page pinpoints the shooter\u2019s position. When yet a third law enforcement officer is killed, it\u2019s clear the killer is after specific individuals, but they seem unrelated and even are from different law enforcement agencies. Figuring out what they have in common calls on Page\u2019s insightful investigatory skills, aided by three of those maligned college students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the bodies pile up, it appears that Page and his family are the assassin\u2019s ultimate targets. This is the book\u2019s weakest point, as it seems manufactured so the plot can culminate in a showdown between Page and the killer. While the rationale for the earlier murders follows a kind of twisted logic, the targeting of Page and his family does not. That problem aside, the story provides plenty of thrills along the way, and I hope Pobi writes more about Lucas Page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: from Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robert Pobi \u2013 In a CrimeFictionLovers interview with Robert Pobi about his 2012 debut novel Bloodman, he revealed he\u2019d wanted to write an old-fashioned character-driven story. He\u2019s done it again with his new police procedural, City of Windows. Ten … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****City of Windows - In the midst of a December blizzard NYC is beset by a sniper making \"impossible\" shots. An exciting read from Robert Pobi.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,52,54,40,126,32],"tags":[1667,91],"class_list":["post-8270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-fbi","tag-new-york"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Snow-City-Blizzard.jpg?fit=426%2C384&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-29o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8271,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions\/8271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}