Stephen Solomita

• Born: November 29, 1943
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

TYPES OF PLOT: Police procedural; private investigator; hard-boiled; thriller; inverted

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Stanley Moodrow, 1988-1996; Julia Brennan, 2001-2002

Contribution

Stephen Solomita has proven to be a prolific and versatile writer since his first mystery novel, A Twist of the Knife, featuring police officer (later private eye) Stanley Moodrow, appeared in 1988. His work ranges from the extremely gritty and hard-boiled crime story, such as Keeplock (1995), which is told from the point of view of a former convict to the softer, more traditional mystery, such as Dead Is Forever (2004), which concerns the exploits of a wealthy, aristocratic private investigator in the tradition of C. Auguste Dupin or Philo Vance.

A New Yorker through and through, Solomita’s particular strength is depicting the city and its multifarious denizens. He is especially adept at sketching street people—sex workers, the unhoused, and other assorted personalities—and has an ear well tuned to the rhythm and vocabulary of dialogue as it issues from the mouths of people from the dregs to the pinnacles of society.

A critical favorite among fellow hard-boiled writers, Solomita typically receives positive reviews in both domestic and international venues; however, whether as Solomita or David Cray, he has yet to become a household name among general crime readers. Forced Entry (1990), the fourth novel in his Stanley Moodrow series, was selected as an Editor’s Choice at Drood Review. The seventh entry in the series, Damaged Goods (1996), was nominated for the Hammett Prize, an award from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. Although he has not contributed further to the series, Solomita continues to write in the twenty-first century, publishing The Wrong Side of the Grass in 2023. 

Biography

Stephen E. Solomita was born on November 29, 1943, in New York City and raised with a brother and two sisters in the city’s environs. He was the son of auto parts warehouseman Ernest Solomita and commercial artist Evelyn Klein Solomita. An eager reader, he knew he wanted to be a writer during his early teenage years. He began publishing essays and stories in the Bayside High School literary magazine and other periodicals. Following graduation, Solomita attended Queens College in the early 1960s as a literature major but did not graduate. He afterward worked various jobs, including a stint at his father’s warehouse, while occasionally publishing stories and researching subjects of interest that would later figure in his fiction. He was particularly fascinated by the history of the New York Police Department and the criminal justice system.

In 1983, Solomita bought a taxi medallion and drove a cab in New York City for twelve hours per day for several years. This experience allowed him to observe passengers closely, gave him an unparalleled feel for the city's geography, and provided a plethora of material for his fiction. Fearful that he would end up killing someone or being killed in his dangerous occupation, Solomita quit piloting taxis in favor of the safer, if less secure, task of writing.

Solomita’s first mystery was the initial novel in his hard-boiled series focusing on New York City police officer, later private eye, Stanley Moodrow. A Twist of the Knife was optioned for a film that was never made. For several years, Solomita produced novels in the Moodrow series, the work for which he is probably best known, on an almost yearly basis with such entries as Force of Nature (1989), Bad to the Bone (1991), and the Hammett Award-nominated Damaged Goods. Much of the authentic feel of the series comes from the author’s long-standing friendships with active and retired police officers.

In 1995, with the release of the nonseries thriller Keeplock—for which Solomita interviewed dozens of former convicts to gain information about the psychology of incarceration—he began publishing novels under the pseudonym David Cray, a pen name intended for work of a slightly less hard-boiled nature, written to accommodate the changing tastes of the reading public. Other novels under the Cray byline include two featuring New York detective Julia Brennan (Little Girl Blue, 2002, and What You Wish For, 2002) and such nonseries efforts as Bad Lawyer (2001) and Dead Is Forever (2005).

Solomita has been married twice: His first marriage ended in divorce, and his second wife is deceased. He has one son, now in his thirties. Solomita settled in New York City, near the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an ethnically diverse area with a long and colorful history that figures prominently in much of his fiction.

Analysis

Stephen Solomita knows and greatly respects New York City and its residents. He lovingly describes local landmarks, particularly in his home territory of the Lower East Side. Still, he is also well-versed in the unique qualities of boroughs throughout the sprawling metropolis, from Yonkers to Brooklyn and from Manhattan to Montauk Point at the eastern extreme of Long Island. Solomita understands the city's pulse, whether detailing rush-hour traffic jams or late-night parties.

Solomita’s characters range across the social scale, but he is fond of ordinary people: hardworking shopkeepers, cynical bartenders, and crime-weary police officers. His heroes and villains are drawn from all ethnic types—haughty White people, devout Orthodox Jews, musically-inclined Black Americans, Italian restaurateurs, Irish toughs, and Russian mobsters. Characters, particularly in Moodrow novels, speak an authentic patois, full of ungrammatical street slang, crude humor, and profanity, sprinkled with colorful expressions in native tongues.

Plots in Solomita’s novels cover the full gamut of criminal behavior: rape, murder, kidnapping, drug dealing, and spousal and child abuse. Thematically, the author is an advocate for law and order. Crimes—often shown to be the result of bad upbringing, the pressures of society, unfair luck, or just plain evil lurking in the hearts of men and women—typically do not go unpunished.

Stylistically, Solomita writes straightforward prose without much reliance on literary devices; his characters carry the story. While there is occasional humor, mainly in the form of salty exchanges, and now and then a simile to fix an image in the reader’s mind, the narrative usually moves forward without many side trips. Most of his works are written in the third person. In structure, they typically begin with a dramatic incident or a crisis that sets the story in motion. Solomita is skilled at inventing obstacles for protagonists that increase anxiety and tighten suspense. Although most of his work is decidedly hard-boiled, especially the Moodrow series and nonseries novels like Keeplock, the author is not afraid to experiment with a lighter tone, as in Dead Is Forever. Solomita’s best novels are those closest to his own firsthand knowledge—which portray the sights, sounds, and smells of the street while they deal with crimes that affect the reader at the gut level.

Bad to the Bone

In Bad to the Bone (1991), Connie Alamare, a wealthy romance novelist, hires private eye Stanley Moodrow to investigate the circumstances behind the comatose condition of her daughter Florence “Flo” Alamare and to retrieve her grandson. Flo was a bonding mother to children—including her own son, Billy—born at a Lower East Side pseudo-religious cult and commune called Hanover House. The commune, under the leadership of sinister Davis Craddock, on the surface is an organization that remolds society’s misfits into productive citizens. However, it is a front for the distribution of a new, potentially lethal designer drug called PURE, which is ten times as addictive as heroin. In the course of setting up and protecting the undercover drug operation, Craddock and his minions resort to kidnapping, sexual orgies, child abuse, and murder. Once the manufacture and distribution of PURE is under way, Craddock intends to take the millions gained from the sale of the drug and flee to South America.

Using resources from his lifetime of law enforcement and relying on his former partner Jim Tilley for inside information, Moodrow probes for legal weak spots in the commune’s defenses and slowly closes in on Craddock. Tension mounts as Moodrow’s girlfriend, Betty Haluka, goes underground as a potential commune member at Hanover House, is exposed, and is held for ransom.

Told in the third person from several points of view, including that of villain Craddock (who keeps a journal of his misdeeds), Bad to the Bone begins slowly as the setting, characters, and situation are established. Suspense builds inexorably, and the pace quickens to an exciting, white-knuckle finale.

Keeplock

A tough-as-nails nonseries novel, Keeplock is a first-person story of career criminal and longtime drug user Peter Frangello, now in his late thirties and newly released on parole from the maximum-security Cortlandt Correctional Facility.

Unwilling to do more time after narrowly avoiding a nasty assassination attempt, Frangello is buffeted between several powerful forces. The parole system places him in a halfway house in a run-down area of New York City, where criminal temptations surround him. A group of former inmates enlists him to participate in a supposedly foolproof armored car robbery, planned to coincide with the pope’s visit so police forces will be preoccupied with security issues. A pair of detectives of questionable morality browbeat the former convict into informing on his prison friends so that the law enforcement officers can prevent the planned crime and win accolades. A former girlfriend humiliated by being imprisoned in association with the crime that led to Frangello’s most recent incarceration—a robbery during which he stole a ring that he gave to her—still has feelings for her man. Contradictory emotions tear Peter himself: He wants to go straight, but after a lifetime of crime, he fears he is too set in his ways ever to change.

Profane, violent, hard-boiled, and unforgiving, Keeplock is populated with a cast of well-drawn characters who speak the language of the streets. As complications mount, Peter twists and turns among loyalties to his prison mates, his girlfriend, and himself, and the tension ratchets up as the moment for the heist draws closer. Will he go through with the robbery, thereby risking death? Will he betray his friends and incur their vengeance? Will the police keep their promises? Will Peter survive against impossible odds? A fast-paced thriller that examines many facets of criminal behavior under a microscope, Keeplock has the ring of absolute authenticity.

Bad Lawyer

In Bad Lawyer (2013), former mob lawyer Sid Kaplan has fallen from the heights, thanks to alcohol and drug addiction, and after a year of rehabilitation, is piecing his life and practice together. With the assistance of alcoholic former police officer Caleb Talbot and former prostitute and heroin addict Julia Gill—two people Kaplan rescued on his way up—the lawyer takes on a new case. Priscilla “Prissy” Sweet has been accused of the murder of her abusive, drug-dealing Black American husband, Byron. This crime causes a sensation in the New York media because of its interracial nature and practically guarantees Kaplan new business if he can get the woman off. However, Kaplan, who, despite his history, has a strong moral sense, is not sure Priscilla should be set free because she has lied about several key points. Worse, her lies concerning a suitcase full of drug money set vicious dealers on the people to whom Kaplan is closest, initiating a wave of violence that leaves death and destruction in its wake.

A hard-boiled courtroom procedural in first person, Bad Lawyer is populated with Solomita’s usual cast of unusual, true-to-life, morally ambiguous characters. The novel provides intriguing, authentic insights into the justice system's workings. It portrays the media as vulturelike, greedy for details to feed to the masses of readers held in thrall by bloody crimes.

Dead Is Forever

Despite its noir-themed title, Dead Is Forever (2005) is more soft than hard-boiled. Protagonist Philip Beckett is a wealthy wastrel, the scion of a multimillionaire industrialist, and a product of Choate, Harvard, and the Wharton School of Business. He is in his early thirties, of average height and weight, and inconspicuous except for the expensive clothing he invariably wears. Philip, who survives mainly on a trust fund, worked for a security company before becoming a licensed private eye, and for large fees, he performs discreet services for upper-class clients.

In Dead Is Forever, Philip’s cold-hearted, ambitious sister Regina hires the dilettante private eye to investigate a family affair. Their chubby, homely cousin Audrey is married to a charming but destitute Italian count, Sergio D’Alesse, who has a gambling problem: He is forty thousand dollars in arrears to con man Gaetano Carollo, known as “Gentleman John” Carroll and the Beckett family refuses to bail him out of debt any longer. Philip investigates, and complications ensue, including the murder of Count D’Alesse, which precipitates several other offstage murders.

Dead Is Forever is an odd novel: too hard-edged to be called cozy but too rose-tinted, thanks to the hero’s book-long affair with corporate lawyer Magdalena “Maggie” Santos, to be categorized as a thriller. Told in first person and populated with Solomita’s typical cast of intriguing secondary characters from the seedy side of the street, the novel has few outright action sequences between long, involved scenes in which dialogue dominates. The complicated plot requires some knowledge of the stock market and legal issues. The outcome is reminiscent of traditional mysteries, where the detective gathers primary suspects in the drawing room to eliminate them one by one before naming the culprit. Although Solomita may be credited for his innovation in blending various subgenres into a unified whole, the ultimate effect is a failed experiment that is neither clue-laden enough to please traditional fans nor tough enough to satisfy noir readers.

Principal Series Characters:

• Stanley Moodrow is a former New York Police Department officer turned private eye. A large man (six foot six, 250 pounds), Moodrow joined the force during the 1950s and spent thirty-five years as an officer on the Lower East Side before retiring in disgust at the futility of trying to stop crime. A persistent investigator, he still lives in the neighborhood of his former beat with girlfriend Betty Haluka, a feisty Legal Aid lawyer.
• Lieutenant Julia Brennan is a detective with Manhattan North Homicide, part of the New York City Police Department. A self-confident, ambitious woman, Julia is essentially a good, proactive person in a tough job, though she acts hardboiled. After dealing all day with mostly male subordinates who are hostile toward a female boss, she often unwinds with her daughter, Corry, and her uncle, Robert Reid.

Bibliography

Fletcher, Connie. "Review of 'Little Girl Blue,' by Stephen Solomita." Booklist, vol. 98, no. 5, 1 Nov. 2001, p. 461.

Needham, George. "Review of 'Keeplock,' by Stephen Solomita." Booklist, vol. 91, no. 10, 15 Jan. 1996, p. 898.

"Review of 'Bad Lawyer,' by Stephen Solomita." Kirkus Reviews, vol. 68, no. 23, 1 Dec. 2000, p. 1631.

"Review of 'Damaged Goods,' by Stephen Solomita." Publishers Weekly, vol. 242, no. 47, 20 Nov. 1995, p. 68.

“Stanley Moodrow Series.” Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/series/72422-stanley-moodrow. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.

Stastio, Marilyn. “Crime: A Twist of the Knife.” Review of A Twist of the Knife, by Stephen Solomita. The New York Times Book Review, 11 Dec. 1988, p. 34.

“Stephen Solomita.” Mysterious Press, mysteriouspress.com/authors/stephen-solomita/default.asp. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.

Wilkins, Mary Frances. "Review of 'What You Wish For,' by Stephen Solomita." Booklist, vol. 99, no. 8, 15 Dec. 2002, p. 737.