Woodrow Cain was destined for a good life. A graduate of Chapel Hill, married to his college sweetheart, with a beautiful daughter --- what more could a young man ask for in 1940s America? Then the War interceded, and Cain’s degree was next to useless. With his options severely limited, he took a job as a policeman. Then things slid even further, and he lost his wife under circumstances that rendered him ineffective in his position, plus he had to leave his daughter behind to take a job in Manhattan.

Cain arrives just as the ship Normandie is burning out in New York Harbor, a sight he views as a bad omen. The first case he lands as an NYPD detective is an ugly one --- that of a murdered German fished out of the Hudson River, a nasty assignment dumped on him by his new captain, who has it in for him from the very start.

"THE LETTER WRITER is a unique blend of a scholarly sleuth teamed with a Sherlock Holmes-like chameleon in a time of history ripe for building stories of suspense around."

Enter Danziger, a strange little fellow who, on first glance, seems to be a crackpot but turns out to be a bright spot in Cain’s new life. The old guy’s card simply states his name and “Information.” That is, after all, what Danziger deals in, and he does it very well. His profession is letter writer, a vocation that helps immigrants keep in touch with their loved ones back home, for Danziger is a master of many languages and brilliant in a time of rampant illiteracy. Besides providing a great service to his clients, his profession brings him knowledge --- knowledge he wants to use to help Cain close his case. That case threatens to grow far bigger than either of them imagined, and now another dead German has turned up.

Cain and Danziger make an excellent, if uneasy, alliance. Ivy Leaguer Cain is that rare cop who has keen intelligence backing him up, while Danziger supplies the street smarts one needs to survive in New York City. Meanwhile, another unlikely alliance has formed, this one between the government and Mafia bosses, an alliance that serves to keep eyes on the docks and harbors and in the darkest corners, eyes that know what to look out for in this era of uncertainty. Unfortunately, the two alliances often find themselves at odds with each other. And the government finds itself caught trying to gauge whether the good outweighs the bad. Cain and Danziger had better stay out of their way if they want to live to see another day. Of course, that’s not what Cain’s instincts tell him to do, especially when another body linked to the first two is discovered. It’s become a race to stay ahead of these killers.

Author Dan Fesperman deftly weaves real events with fictional ones into this intriguing murder mystery and uses notorious figures from our own history, figures like “Lucky” Luciano. New York must have been a very nervous place as the War launched, leaving people on edge, a feeling that led to desperate measures such as enlisting the aid of the mob and sweeping under the rug those crimes that didn’t much affect the most upstanding of our American citizens.

THE LETTER WRITER is a unique blend of a scholarly sleuth teamed with a Sherlock Holmes-like chameleon in a time of history ripe for building stories of suspense around. And what better setting than New York’s 14th Precinct for a Southern boy to meet up with an aging street-wise immigrant to solve murders no one else seems to care about? The combination is pure chemistry, and pure entertainment.