Ditmas Reads Ditmas: Introducing Author Gabriel Cohen

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Ditmas Reads Ditmas is a new series beginning this month. We will feature a local author, or an author whose book takes place in the neighborhood–this month we have a local author who wrote about our neighborhood. At the beginning of the month we will introduce the author and the book, and at the end of the month we will host book-club style discussion in the comments section. Our goal is to support our local authors and build our community through reading.

Our inaugural author, Gabriel Cohen, wrote his most recent book, The Ninth Step, in his former apartment on Beverly Road (he now lives on Stratford). The book takes place in South Brooklyn, as defined by the Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force. The action and plot development takes place right here on Coney Island Avenue, as well as in Red Hook, Coney Island, and Midwood.

The Ninth Step is the fourth book in Cohen’s Jack Leightner crime novel series. Cohen recommends you read the books in order as the earlier books inform the later ones, but each book stands on its own.

About Gabriel Cohen

Cohen has lived in Brooklyn for 22 years. Life in the borough, coupled with growing up in a creative home, has inspired five novels and a memoir. When Cohen lived on Wyckoff Street, he had a conflict with a neighbor over loud music. Boombox, a novel about cultural co-existence and clash, grew out of the conflict. The Ninth Step was born shortly after Cohen moved to Ditmas. Each morning he woke to yellow cabs parked up and down his street and he wondered, “Who drives all these cabs?”

Cohen found Ditmas Park accidentally, but serendipitously. He needed a cheap apartment within running distance of Prospect Park. While moving in, Cohen introduced himself to his new neighbors and discovered the real reason he was paying below market rent: the landlord killed his wife in what was now Cohen’s bathroom. (Cohen was only told his landlord “lived upstate.”)

Cohen took the news in stride; the place didn’t seem haunted. Then one fall afternoon loud clanging came from the pipes in the bathroom. For an anxious moment he thought of ghosts—the noise was coming from the scene of the crime—but the noise turned out to be innocuous. The boiler had flipped on. One has to wonder if that scene will make it into one of Cohen’s murder mysteries.

There comes a time when you have to decide if you are a resident of a neighborhood—if you truly live here, or are just biding your time. Cohen chose Ditmas Park. He says he finds the neighborhood more diverse than other parts of the city.

“There are pockets,” Cohen explains, “of various countries in other parts of the city. But they mostly keep to themselves. In Ditmas the people living on either side of you speak different languages.”

Cohen’s apartment building hosts people with accents from all over the globe, including Mandarin, Haitian, Pakistani. And he notes that in Ditmas Park, warring cultures co-exist peacefully.

The Book Inspiration

Authenticity is important to Cohen. “Many mystery writers,” he explains, “cannibalize who-done-it shows on TV.”  Cohen walks around the neighborhoods he writes about to gather inspiration. “Just hearing what people say is more interesting than anything I could make up,” Cohen says. Perhaps this is why Cohen gets feedback from former Brooklynites telling him he has captured the Brooklyn of their youth.

­The Ninth Step is a work of fiction, but Cohen included four actual events in his novel:

* The Gallo brothers of the Red Hook mafia kept a lion in their basement. If you didn’t pay your debts, you were “sent to the basement to talk to Leo.”

* A pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden supposedly resulted in some of the Somali pirates, who went snooping around the ship, getting symptoms of radiation poisoning.

* In 1943, a munitions ship in the New York Harbor caught fire. New York’s Bravest and the Coast Guard, in a prelude to 9/11, risked their own lives to avert what almost turned into one of the greatest disasters in human history.

* The Ninth Step explores the decimation of Little Pakistan after 9/11.

The Book

The title is borrowed from the steps addicts take on their road to recovery. We assume the title foretells a story of redemption and forgiveness. The book opens with a murder confession and we read to discover if redemption and forgives will be achieved. If so, whose?

Cohen explores people and relationships through the crime scene milieu. The locations in Cohen’s books act as a character. Cohen feels most proud when readers contact him to say things like, “You captured the Brooklyn of my childhood,” or, “You showed what it’s really like to be a police detective.”

Is the Ditmas Park in The Ninth Step your Ditmas Park? Your Kensington? Your Midwood? Do you recognize your street as Jack Leightner’s patrol car rolls by? Do you shop in the deli where the murder happened? If you feel your Coney Island Avenue is portrayed in The Ninth Step, please write in and tell us in a couple of weeks. Cohen will be available for comments at the end of the month.

You can find The Ninth Step at some independent shops like The Community Book Store on 7th Ave between Carroll and Garfield. Or, buy it online at:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Cohen’s other books are available in hard copy and e-reader format.

Tags: Ditmas Reads Ditmas, fiction, Gabriel Cohen, Writers
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