Red Rosa — Michael Collins

Who shoots a bag lady? the policeman asked. No one had the answer - yet. In this riveting novel set in 1988 New York, private investigator Dan Fortune faces a tough question: Who'd want to murder Rosa Gruenfeld, nearly ninety years old and a lifelong fiery Communist living in a derelict hotel in the bohemian Chelsea district? In the hospital, confused and hallucinating, she's visited by son Nicholas, who walked away from her years before, fed up with her Marxist doctrine and her shopping bags of pamphlets and handouts. But Granddaughter Lennie has her own causes, and one of them is Rosa. A rock singer, Lennie hires Dan to uncover the would-be killer. Dan promptly finds himself targeted, too, and the only way he's going to stop whoever it is, is to find out who in Rosa's past hated her so much he or she still wanted her dead. From her three husbands to her children and her brother, to the police and to the FBI, Dan is propelled on a trail of history and politics, bitterness and hope. As Kirkus Reviews said, When it's all over, the pieces of the puzzle fit with sweet inevitability. Dan survives a variety of attacks to fight the good fight another day. The reader can hope it's in a story as suspenseful, character-rich, and absorbing as this.