Murder on Coney Island (Nypd Captain Bill Donovan, 9) - Tapa dura

When the body of a much-despised real-estate developer is found in the basement of a Coney Island candy store, NYPD captain Bill Donovan finds himself rounding up a host of suspects.

Michael Jahn has roots that run deeper in New York than any other novelist. When he writes about New York, he draws on several hundred years of colorful family history. Among his forebears in the City That Never Sleeps were a Spanish-American sailor (who lived in Brooklyn and, appropriately, was a gunner aboard the USS Brooklyn during the Civil War); a Manhattan Irishman who drove a horse-drawn trolley; a personal maid to a branch of the Roosevelt family; a sportswriter at the legendary Brooklyn Eagle newspaper who later became the editorial page editor of the Queens-based Long Island Press; and, appropriately for the author of Murder on the Waterfront, the German-American proprietor of a landmark waterfront hotel, saloon, and eventual speakeasy.

Michael Jahn began his daily newspaper career at The New York Times before turning to fiction. After winning the Edgar Award for The Quark Maneuver, he began the Bill Donovan mysteries with Night Rituals. His newest, Murder in Coney Island, is the ninth Donovan novel.