Welcome to Cooper by Tariq Ashkanani

​    What’s an Edinburgh solicitor doing writing neo-noir set in Cooper, Nebraska? Ah, but that’s the beauty of fiction, isn’t it - it’s transporting power. The closest to teleportation our civilization may ever come.
    What’s in Cooper, Nebraska? Not much, actually, it’s a typical small-town USA and much like Nebraska of popular imagination it’s as down and dirty and bleak as this story depicts it. Not the sort of place you’d end up in by choice, but then again, the novel’s protagonist, a disgraced detective Levine, doesn’t really get much of a choice. The man failed pretty epically in Washington, DC and, for his sins, is sent to the purgatorial Cooper, where he promptly gets involved in another ethically and morally questionable situation, dirty cops, a serial killer and all.
    Levine might have thought Cooper to be just a backwater nowhere, but it’s more than that, the murky waters hide a quicksand beneath them…the more he tries to come clean, the more it drags him under. And that’s basically the story without giving away too much.
     I categorized it as neo-noir, but it doesn’t quite maintain the same class throughout, it’s darker, heavier, dirtier, and got a hypermasculine tough-guy sort of presence that took some getting used to. Overall, and especially for a debut and especially for such a far stretch (for a solicitor…nothing about law here, just lawlessness), it’s decently done, even if over seasoned with a very specific blend of tough-guy testosterone. Read pretty quickly and entertained sufficiently. Bleak, very bleak. You can tag it…a crime drama as bleak as Nebraska. Thanks Netgalley.