Jersey Tomatoes

An iconoclastic private investigator--a one-time FBI agent and seminarian--confronts murder, fear, and fake suicide inside a Jersey City real estate war over the gentrification of a mobster's waterfront, which is being transformed into a miracle mile

Ryder's hardboiled love letter to Jersey City centers on tough PI and troubled ex-Catholic Malone, who is hired by a loathsome real estate developer named Jarrett to look into threats on his life, then by an attractive anti-religious activist called Charisma Kelly to prove that her Catholic mother did not commit suicide. At first the two cases seem unconnected; but the appearance of numerous murdered and mutilated bodies, as well as revelations from other sources, begins to link them, and Malone finds himself in a web of danger and deceit that brings him to a shootout on the beach. While the plot is confusing and overcomplicated, the choice of Jersey City is charmingly eccentric, and Ryder's first-person narrative is stylish, original and fun.
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