The Nightworkers by Brian Selfon

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on October 6, 2020

Crime novels that focus on criminals are almost always more interesting than crime novels that focus on cops. Where unimaginative crime fiction portrays cops as righteous protectors of the helpless who are preyed upon by evil villains, writers who create empathy for criminals understand that good and evil lurk in every heart. The path one follows is often dictated by circumstance as much as choice.

Shecky Keenan, Keresha Brown (Shecky's niece), and Henry Vek (the son of Shecky's cousin) have made themselves into a family. Shecky operates a money laundering business. Henry supervises the runners, the people who pick up illicit cash and send it to foreign accounts through various money transfer services. Keresha is a 23-year-old former addict who helps Shecky and Henry with her sharp eyes and a talent for burglary.

Shecky is getting older. Nothing matters to him as much as Henry and Keresha. He knows they won’t stay in his house forever. He “fears a silent house above all else.” Yet he’ll cross any line to protect them, even if he might lose their affection by crossing lines against their will.

Shecky probably identifies with Keresha because his parents were less than nurturing. Keresha’s mother cared more about heroin than she cared about her daughter. Keresha is on probation and obsessed with her court-ordered therapist, who isn’t pleased when she breaks into his home at night to share her problems. Keresha struggles with bad lifestyle choices because that’s what people do, but the fact that she continues to struggle sends a message of hope.

Henry enjoys making art and admires the murals and other work of a young man he befriends named Emil Scott. Against Shecky’s advice, Henry takes on Emil as a runner. Emil seems to be unusually honest and reliable until the day Henry assigns him to pick up a large bag of cash. Both Emil and the cash disappear. Henry worries that he misplaced his trust while Shecky worries that the owner of the cash, an unsavory customer named Vasya, will make his displeasure known with violence.

Shecky’s problems are compounded by his fear that the police are closing in. “Suspicious transaction” notices are leading to closed accounts. A police surveillance camera seems to be focused on his house. Bad things are likely to happen. The questions that loom are why they are happening and whether anything bad will happen to characters the reader cares about.

The other two key characters are Zera and Lipz. Zera is part of the Human Trafficking Task Force, a woman from Montenegro who “was born of evil and had known evil all her life.” The goals she wants to accomplish are not within the ambit of conventional police work. Lipz is Henry’s long-time friend. She’s a heroin dealer who helps Henry and Shecky find new customers but engages in dangerous behavior in her quest for a share of the profits.

The plot is smart and focused. Brian Selfon delivers graceful prose that is stripped of redundancy and unnecessary explanations. The story is sufficiently complex that it keeps the reader guessing but not so convoluted that the reader will become lost.

While the story is entertaining, Selfon’s characters form the heart of the novel. Central characters evolve as the story progresses. Some of them are casting aside the defenses they created to respond to adversity and are opening themselves to a feeling of self-worth. At the very least, they may come to appreciate the importance of friendship and family. Being there for another person will always help you feel better about yourself, will make you feel less alone in an alienating world. These are the kind of sympathetic characters who make me extoll the virtues of crime fiction that focuses on criminals.

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