Manhattan is best appreciated from the shores of Brooklyn. You’re close enough to take in the city’s majestic skyline but far enough to avoid the crazies who live there. Not that Brooklyn doesn’t have its share, but New York City is Looney Tunes Central with more wackos per capita than anywhere else on the planet. Trust me, as a PI, I’ve dealt with more than my fair share and deeply appreciate the separation the East River affords.
My day starts in Bensonhurst, the Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up, still dwell, and wouldn’t trade for any place on earth. My sister Theresa made coffee, a Herculean task considering that she was out carousing until the wee hours of the morning. The woman is a party animal blessed with more beauty, charisma, and suitors than any human deserves. That she’s conscious before noon is an honest-to-God miracle.
Brooklyn has an energy all its own, filled with eclectic neighborhoods and bustling streets. Yeti coffee tumbler in hand, I take to the avenues in my ’63 split-window Corvette coupe. The Vette is a treasure entrusted to my care by my dad, Pete Cototi, a retired NYPD sergeant. He loves that car almost more than life and I suppose it’s his way of saying, “You’re alright, kid.” I protect it like it’s the Hope Diamond.
Less than three weeks had passed since Luca Mura’s demise, a gangster who had tried to kill me and my sister. I was doing my damndest to put that terrible incident out of my mind. And what better way for a girl to cut loose than to surrender herself to a six-foot hunk of sculpted granite with sable brown eyes, a Svengali by the name of Rocco Benelli. I’d always believed that he was nothing more than a womanizing lout, but recent developments proved me wrong. Benelli had another side, a sensitive, caring, irresistible side, a side worth fighting for, which made him even more desirable. I was the moth to his flame and in my heart I knew the day would come when I got burned. But for the time being, fun was the order of the day.
After my workday wound down, I met Benelli at a nightclub and danced up a storm. I was as dry as the Sahara and asked Angela, the bartender, for a glass of water.
“Water, huh?” Angela eyed me disapprovingly. “Gina, you becoming a lightweight or something?”
Benelli had his back to the bar and a shot glass to his lips as he scanned the activity on the dance floor. His shirt was so damp it looked as if he’d just competed in a wet tee-shirt contest. He was smoldering, dead sexy. I cut my eyes in his direction. “Water is still what they use to put out fires, isn’t it?”
Angela gasped. “Right. What was I thinking? I’ll bring you a Big Gulp.” She filled a glass the size of an ice bucket and planted it on the counter in front of me. “Is this enough?” she asked. “I know the effect Rocco has on most women.”
“I think this trough will do it.”
“What about Benelli?” she asked. “Should I bring him a glass of water too?”
We locked eyes and began to laugh impishly, then turned to admire the work of art Michelangelo couldn’t have bested. “Nah,” I said with a smirk. “Let him sweat.”
Man-Killer, A Gina Cototi Cases Book #1
Genre: Private Investigator Mystery
Release: January 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link
Gina Marie Cototi is a feisty Sicilian sparkplug, a Brooklyn-based PI with a fondness for family, friends, and one roguishly handsome Casanova named Rocco Benelli. Hey, nobody’s perfect.
This headstrong sleuth drives a split-window ’63 Corvette coupe and never, I mean never, misses Sunday dinner with Ma, Dad, and her sister Theresa.
Broke, brooding, and breathtaking, Benelli, an out-of-work parole officer is cursed with more charm than any man deserves. Deep down, Gina knows she shouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole, but she’s got more cases than she can handle, and Benelli’s ready, willing, and able-bodied, the perfect partner to help her get the goods on Vlad “The Scud” Rzhevsky, a disreputable boxer running point on dirty deeds for Luca Mura, a mobster as evil as he is dangerous.
Gina must somehow close the case without losing her life to Mura or her virtue to Benelli, but a moth working alongside a flame is always in danger of catching fire.
For fans of Janet Evanovich. Think of Man-Killer as Stephanie Plum meets Moonstruck.
Meet the author
Lawrence Kelter hails from New York but now calls North Carolina his home. He is the bestselling author of more than thirty mystery and thriller novels including the Stephanie Chalice Mystery series that has topped bestseller lists in the US, UK, and Australia. In 2017, he penned Back to Brooklyn, the studio-authorized sequel to the cult comedy classic My Cousin Vinny. Early in his writing career, he received direction from literary icon, Nelson DeMille, who edited portions of his early work. Well before he said, “Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum,” he said, “Kid, your work needs editing, but that’s a hell of a lot better than not having talent. Keep it up!”