This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S TOWER OF BABEL ABOUT?
I really don't like not providing my own synopsis/tease for a novel. But I'm overdue with this post, and a lot of that has to do with stumbling on this section. So I'm going to appropriate it from Soho Press' site:

Queens, New York—the most diverse place on earth. Native son Ted Molloy knows these streets like the back of his hand. Ted was once a high-powered Manhattan lawyer, but after a spectacular fall from grace, he has found himself back on his home turf, scraping by as a foreclosure profiteer. It’s a grubby business, but a safe one—until Ted’s case sourcer, a mostly reformed small-time conman named Richie Rubiano, turns up murdered shortly after tipping Ted off to an improbably lucrative lead.

With Richie’s widow on his back and shadows of the past popping up at every turn, Ted realizes he’s gotten himself embroiled in a murder investigation. His quest for the truth will take him all over Queens, plunging him into the machinations of greedy developers, mobsters, enraged activists, old litigator foes and old-school New York City operators.

HAAAAAVE YOU MET TED?*
* Sorry, I couldn't resist. Not that I tried all that hard.

Ted's a good example of a very familiar type of Crime Fiction protagonist. At one point in the not-too-distant past, he'd been very successful for his age with a bright future ahead of him. Then he hits a personal and professional rough patch, and all that success and future vanishes. He's now had to recalibrate his life, his legal career in ruins and so begins a new—albeit somewhat related—career, with new routines, a new home, new allies, and so on to restart his life.

Like most of this type, he's moved on, but not really. He still misses his old life, still laments it, regrets the things that happened (unjustly) to bring down his house of cards, and would go back if he could. He's given chances over the course of Tower of Babel to revisit that life, to see how green the grass is on that side of the fence, and his response to that really tells the reader more about who he is than anything else in the book can.

IN A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
I love when a novel hits me with a great sense of place—and Tower of Babel did that to me. Sears doesn't spend that much time describing the city or its landmarks or anything like that. But the city permeates everything. Travis Bickle drove the same streets as Mohammad did (and probably in a safer manner). Sherman McCoy struck deals with the same kinds of people. Det. Denny Malone would be known to the detectives on the murder.

This is a novel that has to take place in New York.* I just don't see it working anywhere else—are there shady real estate deals, corrupt politicians, organized crime, and entities with too much power in Chicago, Miami, L.A., Boston, London, etc.? Absolutely. Do other major cities have teams that have a fanbase as devoted and as constantly disappointed as the Mets? Absolutely (although most of them don't have to share a city with the Yankees). Ethnic diversity and economic disparity might have different mixes and present in different ways from metropolitan to metropolitan, but they're there just the same. But I just don't see how this novel works in Miami or Boston. The organized crime of it all would be different in Chicago. There's something about shady real estate antics that seems quintessentially NYC (it shouldn't, but it does).

* Granted, I'm just some dude from Idaho, what do I know?

Any book that transports me so convincingly is worth the time and effort (not that this took much of the latter).

TED AND JILL
Ted is still friends with his ex-wife, Jill. They're obviously very important to each other and spend a good deal of time together—primarily because of the NY Mets and Ted's season tickets. I absolutely loved this version of divorced adults interacting with each other (there were no kids involved, which likely helped). Early on, when I wasn't as sold as I eventually would be on the murder storyline (and was still trying to understand the real estate angle), I put in my notes that I'd have enjoyed the novel more if it was just about them spending time together. By the novel's end, I'd changed my mind—but I'd still take a novella just about the two of them.

It's a healthy friendship, supportive and challenging—and just fun. (then again, this is a noir-ish Crime Novel, so I make no promises that the way things start is the way they will end).

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT TOWER OF BABEL?
I stumbled a little in the beginning trying to understand the way that Ted's making his money now and the antics involved in all the real estate transactions (ethical, legal, and otherwise), but that's primarily because my brain doesn't do well with that sort of thing. I ultimately gave up trying and just accepted it in the same way I do with Asimov's worldbuilding or things along those lines. By the end of the novel, I (am pretty sure that) I understood it all because I'd stopped trying to decipher it (I still can't totally explain psychohistory or Asimov's take on superluminal flight, for what's it's worth). The details are both not as important to the novel as everything else and not as difficult as I was making it.

I can see Sears settling into this character and this world and turning Molloy into a typical scrappy lawyer character in the vein of Mickey Haller or Eddie Flynn. But I don't think that's the direction this is going—would I read that version? Absolutely, but I already have Haller, Flynn, et al. It feels to me that this is headed in a more David vs. Corporate Goliaths tack, maybe with some murder, etc. thrown in, sure—but my money is on this series focusing on corporate crimes, and corruption (both political and economic). Either way, I'm in for at least one or two more books—and I expect most readers will feel the same way.

This is not your typical Legal Thriller, and Sears sucks you into the story in ways you won't expect—actually, I think you'll end up expecting very little about the story and characters as you go along. But in the end, you'll realize that just about everything had to go the way it did. I love that feeling of being taken unaware and then seeing that there was no other way for this jigsaw to be put together. It's so satisfying when you can look at the whole thing (and a great ride along the way).

Crimes you're not accustomed to reading about—crimes you're very familiar with—a cast of characters you don't see every day, and an ethically dubious protagonist (or is he?). Tower of Babel is a great entryway into a series that should garner a fanbase, and you should think about hopping on before the bandwagon builds up too much speed. ( )

Michael Sears has a new series and I like it. "Tower of Babel" begins with a community protest against a huge development project in Queens (reminiscent of the Brooklyn fight against the Brooklyn Arena decades ago). It soon becomes the story of fraud, and the greed that leads to the destruction of personal honor.

Ted Mallory is a Queens native who, after crashing out of some fancy Manhattan law firms, has returned to his old neighborhood where he practices a niche kind of law searching for money owed to people from past real estate transactions and returning it to them for a fee. It's a routine kind of work and Ted's comfortable with it. Then Richie, his helper, comes in with a great find, a large sum that appears to have been forgotten. Ted's instincts tell him to leave it alone, but Richie trails the money on his own time and ends up dead. Suddenly a string of wild characters parades through Ted's office asking him to track down Richie's killer and grab the money. Ted's quiet life isn't so quiet any more.

Ted's street smart, but he's a lawyer, not a detective or a tough guy, and he really doesn't want to get involved. Of course his protests don't work and he finds himself sleuthing. He has a new assistant, a terrifying cab driver, a priest, a good cop, and a community organizer to help. The bad cop comes on a bit too strong for my taste though.

I like books like this: Decent guy gets in over his head through no fault of his own, a strong cast of men and women and colorful local characters, a plot that could plausibly be real life. I'll be looking forward to the next installment.

I received a review copy of "Tower of Babel" by Michael Sears from Soho Crime through Gumshoe Review where this review originally appeared online in the April 2021 issue. ( )

“Tower of Babel” opens with a confession; if Ted had known Richie would be dead in three days perhaps he would have tried harder to like him. What follows is a story of scheming, political corruption, money laundering, defrauding the elderly, and just bad karma.
Sears drops readers into the middle of Queens, an ethnically and culturally diverse part of New York City. It is a city in transition with new development threatening to tear the community apart. New construction with buildings stretching upward into the dark grey sky seems to be planned in every neighborhood. The cost to empty a building for redevelopment is more than just money; it can also be measured by the lives of people who are disrupted, shattered, and left homeless.
Ted Molloy is a fixer, a finder; he is resourceful, impulsive, and loves baseball. He normally tracks down people who are owed extra money from real estate transactions and takes a cut for helping them get the cash. He follows the money. No one gets murdered over surplus money, and yet somehow someone did.
“Tower of Babel” starts slowly with the search for an elderly land owner and picks up momentum until the fast, furious, and tragic end. Lines are crossed that should never have been approached. One question remains; was it love or obsession if you murdered someone? Did it matter?
I received a review copy of “Tower of Babel” from Michael Sears and Soho Crime. The characters have layer upon layer of secrets, motives, and surprises. Oh yes, and there are Russians. ( )

Ted Malloy's life as a lawyer for a well-regarded law firm in Manhattan, married to the beloved granddaughter of a powerful judge, has fallen apart. He has returned to his native Queens where he mines a crack in real estate deals for a living. It's not a glamorous life - he gets paid when he finds commercial property that has been foreclosed and is being sold at auction. If the price paid for the property is higher than what is owed in mortgage payments and back taxes, the difference can be claimed by the previous owner. Ted has an ex-con gopher who locates records of such auctions, then Ted locates the previous owners and splits this "surplus money" with them. Usually it's not a lot of money, but it's enough for Ted. But his gopher comes across an unusual case where the "surplus" is over a million bucks. Normally Ted wouldn't pursue big deals like this, but when his gopher is killed and the man's wife asks Ted to find the money and the murderer, his sense of justice is aroused and he agrees to check it out, dipping a toe into a fast-moving current of corruption.

Michael Sears is known for financial thrillers that send readers into the moneyed halls of Wall Street firms. In this debut of a new series, he sets readers down far from Wall Street, on the streets of the most diverse county in the nation, where most residents get by with small businesses and modest lives but where gentrification is threatening to upend lives. The characters in this novel are well drawn, the plot is intricate, and the pacing, while not break-neck, has a steady foot on the accelerator. Moving to Queens may be a step down on the financial ladder for Ted Malloy but it's a good move for readers who've had enough of Wall Street but not of Michael Sears.