Brooklyn Motto

"Brooklyn Motto is a stylish, propulsive mystery that beautifully captures late 90s New York City in the convulsions of enormous social and economic change. Alex Johnson combines novelistic texture with cinematic pace to great effect, and narrator Nico Kelly is the perfect guide to this world full of danger, corruption, and also hope." - Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You

"Alex R. Johnson's playful, witty, brooding, and heartfelt Brooklyn Motto is everything readers of classic private detective fiction could want - but placed in the nothing-like-classic East Village and Brooklyn of 1998. Brimming with distinctive characters, clever language, and crisp observations, the book is a thoroughly engaging and deeply satisfying read. I tore through it and had a lot of fun." - Evan Handler, actor; author of Time On Fire: A Comedy of Terrors and It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive

"[Brooklyn Motto] is an inventive hard-boiled mash-up starring a reluctant GenX PI who accidentally finds himself in way over his head. His backstory and future relies on a complicated extended family and their immigrant Brooklyn culture. A love letter to NYC & detective fiction." - John Doe (X), musician, actor and author of Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk and More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking and Legacy of L.A. Punk

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Fans of Richard Price, Charlie Huston, and Jonathan Lethem will love this coming-of-age New York-centric detective noir debut from esteemed filmmaker and screenwriter Alex R. Johnson.

New York City, 1998. New York is changing around Nico Kelly, and he can feel more coming.

A private investigator and self-proclaimed photographer, Nico is stuck in a loop of city contracts and self loathing. What little middle class there was is disappearing-long-standing factories are moving out and taking their reliable neighborhood jobs with them, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani's police force has the streets in a stranglehold.

Nico spends his days looking for fraudsters while taking photos of municipal employees on disability claims. He spends his nights trying to get rid of the nagging feeling that his day job makes him a professional snitch-traversing dive bars, playing pinball, and fighting through the haze of hungover mornings and blurry evenings.

Pushing thirty years old and feeling split between his American and Latin heritage, between youth and adulthood, Nico finds himself at a precipice-who is he and what should he become?

When Nico witnesses and records a murder during one of his insurance fraud investigations, bodies start to turn up all around him and he's forced into solving a mystery he didn't ask to solve. Humorous, gritty, and real, Nico's search for what it means to be human takes him through the deepest and darkest parts of New York City.

Author: Alex R. Johnson
Publisher: Hfi
Published: 03/11/2025
Pages: 276
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.64lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.25w x 0.62d
ISBN: 9798218524012


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2025

About the Author
Johnson, Alex R.: - Alex R. Johnson is a writer and screenwriter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His feature film TWO STEP premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW in 2014 and went on to become a New York Times Critic's Pick. His screenplay NORTHEAST KINGDOM was selected for the 2016 Black List, and his screenplay ANY ROUGH TIMES ARE NOW BEHIND YOU was selected by the Austin Film Society's Artist Intensive lab where he was mentored by late director Jonathan Demme. He also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Ernest Tidyman's novel, BIG BUCKS, for Pascal Pictures/Sony Entertainment. Johnson's family hails from the Andes of Ecuador, where their 100-year-old dairy farm still operates. He tries to return at least once a year.