When Marshall Grade agrees to meet his former NYPD colleague Ray Vialoux, he does not expect Ray to end up dead on the floor of a New York restaurant.

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Exit .45 by Ben Sanders is a gritty crime procedural featuring former undercover police officer turned private investigator, Marshall Grade. Though it’s the third instalment in a series, following American Blood and Marshall’s Law, it reads well as a stand alone.

Marshall is sitting with a former NYPD colleague, Ray Vialoux, in a restaurant when a masked man fires a shotgun through the window, and Ray, who’d arranged the meeting to ask Marshall for help with mob gambling debts, is killed. There’s no doubt it’s a hit, but debts rarely result in murder, after all, a dead man can’t pay. Needing to understand why, Marshall ignores the warnings of the official investigating officer, Nevins, to back off, and decides to track the shooter down.

Sanders leads his protagonist into New York City’s underworld amongst mafia thugs, drug traffickers and hired killers. Marshall knows he can force answers that the police can’t and he’s not afraid of insisting, even though that means he becomes a target himself. I thought the main plot worked well as Marshall tries to figure out what Roy did to end up a target, and here’s plenty of tense action as Marshall is beaten, abducted and shot at, and gives as good as he gets.

Marshall is mostly what you expect, tough and resourceful, but he experiences PTSD from his two years undercover that manifests as compulsive behaviours. He left the NYPD under a cloud, accused of stealing a quarter of a million dollars after the shooting that ended the operation, though he denies it to anyone that asks. There’s a touch of romance for Marshall in Exit .45 with an ex-colleague of Roy’s, who joins him on his quest, and a small complication with Roy’s widow.

A well crafted crime novel that unfolds at a good pace, Exit .45 is an entertaining and absorbing read. ( )