“Mark SaFranko will one day be remembered as one of the greatest American writers of the early 21st century”, reckons Martin de Bourmont is his 3am interview here with SaFranko.

Mark Safranko’s The Suicide

SaFranko’s most recent novel The Suicide was brought out by my own publisher Honest Publishing. SaFranko has a name for contemporary noir, thrillers and confessional novels based on his blue-collar life in New Jersey. He has remarked that some read his works as a criticism of USA society, although he doesn’t see it that way, he is simply writing from his own experience.

It was inevitable that sooner or later I would get around to reading The Suicide. I just didn’t think it would take a whole year before I found the time. Being with the same publisher, I’m not going to attempt a review, but I do want to say how much I enjoyed it.

Brian Vincenti is a cop in Hoboken. He is assigned to investigate an apparent suicide – a young woman jumped or fell from an eleventh floor window. It’s not a particularly unusual case, but something about it makes Vincenti track down all possibilities obsessively. It’s genre fiction, absolutely, but it’s what SaFranko does with the genre that matters. Large parts of the narrative track Vincenti’s failed marriage and life on the beat. So far so good, we are in sympathy for this guy who seems to be plunging himself into his work to avoid thinking about family life. But one evening he stalks his wife who may be having an affair (they are in any case separated) and then in a fit of frustration he beats up a suspect who he knows is innocent.

All this drama is set against a background of a city area in flux. Vincenti observes the mean streets and litter and dives that he grew up in, and the next moment, unaware of the irony, he is lamenting how a once-familar district has been gentrified and “lost to the yuppies and Gen X-ers and punks”.

The amazing cover image is by Slava Nesterov, who also designed the cover of my own book, Greetings, Hero.