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| On Feb. 18, 1970, Frankie Koehler gunned down two people in a New York apartment, walked out of the building with a handkerchief over his face, and disappeared. Twenty-seven years later, an almost-retired DA investigator reopened the “cold” case and tracked down a somewhat reformed but unrepentant Koehler, who was sent to prison for his crimes. A Cold Case chronicles the manhunt and draws portraits of those involved – the Joe Friday-esque investigator, the flamboyant Mafia-connected defense attorney, and Koehler himself, a tough guy literally from another era. These portraits are the heart and soul of the book. A Cold Case is packaged like a true-crime thriller — it’s divided into two sections, “Dead or Alive” and “Reckoning,” and the final phase of the manhunt is gripping -— but Gourevitch had enough access to the case to find the humanity in his players, all of whom spend their lives wading through the gutters of human nature. With crisp writing and an avalanche of detail, the author manages to craft a page-turner out of the usually banal worlds of police investigation and low-level street thuggery. By the end, justice is served, and the story ends about as happily as a tale of double homicide can. Gourevitch suggests an uncomfortable lesson, though: Solving a murder case doesn’t necessarily explain why the crime happened in the first place. — Reviewed by Alan Choate |
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