There definitely are some perks to being a minor celebrity among liberals of a certain age and cultural status whose lives were so devoid of meaning circa 2015-2021 that they decided to embrace politics and "caring about democracy" as defining aspects of their personality.
James Comey, the former FBI director best known for investigating Hillary Clinton's emails (and their connection to Anthony Weiner's dick pics), is enjoying one of those perks right now. Having written what could be charitably described as a mediocre crime novel, Central Park West: A Crime Novel, the author's status as a #Resistance hero who stood up to Donald Trump has assured him a level of publicity and pomp not typically reserved for debut novelists who aren't very good at writing fiction.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, for example, is among the most deranged of the #Resistance fanatics—a fiercely competitive category. She "loved" Comey's "smart, nuanced legal thriller," which is really all you need to know. "Could not put it down," wrote Wallace, who has three mediocre novels to her name, in a blurb for Central Park West. "It's a modern 'good guys vs the bad guys' story in which nearly all of the good 'guys' are actually strong, smart, steely women." Are you not enticed?
The story begins when Tony Burke, a disgraced sex pest and former governor of New York, is injected with a fatal dose of insulin. His estranged wife, Kyra, is charged with murder—in state court, something Comey is determined to clarify at length—after the plot to make it appear like a suicide is foiled by an ill-timed order of "coffee-rubbed Wagyu strip" from a "fancy steakhouse."
Meanwhile, a team of federal attorneys and investigators in Manhattan—not the same as state authorities in ways Comey is more than happy to explain—are working to convict Dominic D'Amico, a.k.a. "The Nose," a notorious gangster and "one of the few mob guys with a progressive view of immigration." A surprising revelation exposes a connection between the two trials and gives the feds reason to believe that Kyra, despite being caught on video entering her husband's apartment building shortly before his death, has been wrongfully accused.
Wallace was right about one thing. There is something very modern about a "good guys vs. bad guys" story in which the good guys are obnoxiously good (and sufficiently diverse) while the bad guys, especially the mafia goons, are only bad on paper. Deep down, they are honorable adversaries who respect the good guys for being so good at their jobs. Central Park West is the Ted Lasso of crime novels.
The main characters are all brilliant Ivy League grads from humble origins who just want to make the world a better place. Nearly all of them are women, but all that means is that Comey goes out of his way to identify the brands of fashionable clothing they are wearing on a given day. More than anything, they are the empty vessels Comey uses to convey his tedious explanations of FBI jargon and other law enforcement minutiae. Did you know the FBI can use cellphone data to pinpoint your exact location? Jim Comey does.
Kyra Burke is "a stunningly beautiful 39-year-old woman" with "high cheekbones framed by a long honey-blonde Jennifer Aniston bob" who overcame her humble origins to attend Yale (on scholarship) and Columbia Law School, married a successful politician, and "started mentoring programs for at-risk girls." Friends and colleagues suspect she suffers from "internalized white patriarchal self-loathing." She's glad her husband is dead but maintains her innocence.
Matthew Parker, Kyra's lawyer, has a "six-foot-two frame ... toned by hours on a Peloton bike and in the pool" and an abundance of earned confidence. "Yeah, bub, I'm a real fuckin' lawyer. How you like them apples?" he imagines telling the state prosecutor after orchestrating a cerebral legal maneuver. He's a brilliant and hardworking defense attorney, obviously, but is somehow shocked to learn that his client legally changed her name after graduating college.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Carleton has a daughter with her ex-husband. She commutes from Hoboken and occasionally splurges on nice clothes—"worth it because she represented the United States of America" and the eternal flame of justice or whatever. She has dedicated her life to pursuing the truth, but would leave it all behind in a second for a legal compliance gig at an ethical hedge fund in Connecticut. "The good ones always leave," Comey laments.
By far the most entertaining character is Nora's sidekick—the "Mr. Rough" to her "Ms. Smooth." Federal investigator Benny Dugan is a "mountain of a man"—"six-foot-five, 250 pounds of Brooklyn"—bullheaded, but in a brilliant way. He knows everything about the mob, but refuses to let work get in the way of asking his female colleagues about their feelings. Every character's dialogue, but especially Dugan's, reads like a parody of the snappy New York cop banter on Law & Order.
"Need to see their entire lives and how they mesh," Dugan says of two possible suspects in a murder investigation. "'Cause it sure looks from the picture I took that they have been doin' a whole lotta meshing. As they say: A picture's worth a thousand words." He is enthusiastically relieved when Nora assures him that a gay crush on a person of interest won't cloud her prosecutorial judgment. "There she is! Ms. Smooth is back," he booms. "Truth and justice is what we're all about! Excellent. Now I gotta get back to being a superhero."
Dugan supposedly has a drinking problem, prone to "wandering the streets looking for violence, to hit someone who deserved it, maybe kill someone who deserved it," but we never actually see it. There's hardly any violence depicted Comey crime novel, and barely any crime. It is utterly devoid of human conflict, unless one counts the internal jockeying among rival government agencies over who has jurisdiction. After using his epic brain to solve the crimes, Dugan reunites with his estranged sons and apologizes for being such a bad father. Everyone cries and forgives each other. Drama!
There is also a fair amount of passive-aggressive status anxiety—conveyed at various point by government employees whose six-figures salaries make them poor relative to private-sector peers—born of the bitter class rivalry between Ivy League liberals who had government jobs before going into corporate finance and the ones who went straight to finance. The noble bureaucrats are a different kind of Ivy League liberal. Truth and justice is what they're all about. They're just as comfortable in a pantsuit as they are in jeans and a Taylor Swift shirt. Write what you know.
Just as there are perks to being a minor #Resistance celebrity, there are drawbacks as well. These include a predisposition toward hubris. "I know I can write," Comey said before being heckled at a recent book tour event. "All good lawyers are great storytellers." He has already finished a draft of the sequel.
Central Park West: A Crime Novel
by James Comey
Mysterious Press, 384 pp., $30