The Case


Fiction - Mystery - Sleuth
252 Pages
Reviewed on 02/15/2015
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Author Biography

Marc Hirsch was born in New York City in 1945. He attended Boston University School of medicine, graduating in 1969. After 42 years as a doctor, he retired from hospitalist practice in 2011. He published his first book, The Case, in 2012 and will publish his second book, the sequel titled Hard Case, in 2015. The Case was edited and republished as a second edition in 2014. Plans for his screenplay of The Case are being made.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Move over Marvel Agent Carter. Allow some room for the likes of Miss Alice White. An independent and intelligent woman, Alice is an interesting character who can come across as a strong or a weak female, depending on the situation in which she is involved. She makes for a thorough and inquisitive investigator and could probably create a career for herself as a Private Investigator. Alice has other plans. She wants to be a lawyer and her work as an investigator for a leading New York law firm is only one step towards her goal, as she takes law courses on the side.

The Case by Marc Hirsch begins by introducing Alice as both clever and manipulative, one in full control of all that she is. She confronts an armed stand-off at the car rental where she always leases her vehicles. While the strong men who work in the shop are tied up, Alice disarms the gunman and saves the day. Rather cliched, but it establishes her strength of character and her ability to improvise on the spot. When her law firm sends her to Stanton, New York, to investigate an exploding toilet that claimed the life of a resident doctor, she sets her talents to work in establishing the chain of events that led to this tragedy and the mob behind the tragedy. What started as a case of negligent homicide turns into a real 1950s style mob attempted takeover.

This is Marc Hirsch's first novel. He writes in a simple, yet endearing style that brings to mind the superhero comic books of the 1950s, the era he writes about. There is a subtle but delightful charm to this book. Its simplicity complements the era, the setting's time period, and also suggests a fascination with the spy thrillers and comic books of the 1950s. Current TV is remaking old classics, as in the case of Marvel Agent Carter. Why can't literature do the same? Marc Hirsch has written a simple, yet complex story with a plot full of multiple twists and turns.

Jack Magnus

The Case is a hard-boiled private detective mystery written by Marc Hirsch. Set in New York in 1955, it features Alice White, an NYU law student who is working her way through school as a private investigator for a small law firm. One of her bosses, Jack Bryce, has been contacted by his childhood friend, Jim Peters, an upstate contractor. An explosion had killed a popular doctor when he was visiting another doctor's residence. Peters was in charge of renovating the house, and the widow wants Peters charged with negligent homicide. Jack and Alice travel up to Stanton to begin an investigation into the cause of the explosion. When they arrive, however, they're faced with hostility on the part of the townspeople and the sheriff, and the brakes on Alice's rental car are tampered with.

Marc Hirsch's hard-boiled detective mystery, The Case, features a private eye who ranks up there with the best of them. Alice White likes drinking her booze and watching boxing matches at Madison Square Garden, and she loves living in her Italian neighborhood in the Bronx. When we first see her, she's singlehandedly disarming a junkie with a gun, and it's all done instinctively and with little fanfare. The time frame of Hirsch's story is inspired and gives the plot a splendid noir quality. I loved seeing the Bronx through Alice's eyes. Hirsch writes smoothly and fluidly, and his story grabbed my attention right away. I had a great time reading this detective story and hope to see more of Alice White's hard-boiled detecting in future stories. The Case is highly recommended.