‘Dead Red’ By Tim O’Mara

Publisher Minotaur Books,
20, January 2016.
ISBN 978-1-250-05863-8 (HB)

Raymond Donne, an ex-Brooklyn cop and now a school teacher, is in the last two weeks of the summer break when his vacation comes to an abrupt halt.  In the middle of the night, a friend asks him to take a drive with him since he has made a mistake and wants Ray’s help.  Before he can reveal anything he is shot dead and Ray ends up with a concussion.

Thus begins an eventful week during which Ray again plays detective.  Along the way, he teams up with Jack Knight, another ex-cop now a PI, who has been retained by a top PR executive to find and return, unharmed, his missing 16-year-old daughter.  It makes for an exciting plot.

Dead Red is the third novel in the series.  And if it is any example, having not read the first two, this reader will go back and read them and, more importantly, look forward to the next installment.  The book is well-written, the plot tightly constructed, and it is recommended.

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Reviewer by Theodore Feit

Tim O'Mara has been teaching math and special education in the New York City public schools
since 1987. O'Mara was inspired to write Sacrifice Fly and create the character of Raymond Donne after making home visits while a schoolteacher in the poorer section of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn. Further moved by his many interactions with the Youth Officers of the NYPD while he served as a middle school dean and his brother's stories as a police sergeant, O'Mara believed that a character with experience in both worlds would make a great protagonist. For the past 13 years, he has hosted and produced a bi-weekly reading series of poetry and prose in New York's East Village. He lives with his family in Manhattan, where he currently teaches middle school math, and is a proud member of Mystery Writers of America, Crime Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Irish American Writers and Authors, Inc., and several teacher unions

www.timomara.net

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.