Central Park West (A Novel)
James Comey (The Mysterious Press, 2023), 329 pages
Former FBI Director and Deputy Attorney General James Comey, author of the memoir A Higher Loyalty: Truth Lies, and Leadership (2018) and the follow-up Saving Justice (2021), has taken a stab at writing fiction. Central Park West, a courtroom and investigative whodunit set in New York City, will have difficulty standing out from other mysteries on the shelves. It ultimately shows itself to be a solidly written novel, although one must overcome a formulaic feeling and a shaky start in which the central crime in the prologue—the murder of a former New York governor in a staged suicide—will be seen as implausibly conceived by those familiar with the chronic health condition used to cover it up. Yet the book recovers to a degree from these initial impressions, the plot is sound, and the action decently paced even if Comey lacks in that ability of great writers to completely absorb the reader in its pages.