Filomena Buscarsela Books
23 Shades of Black is socially conscious crime fiction. It takes place in New York City in the early 1980s, i.e., the Reagan years, and was written partly in response to the reactionary discourse of the time, when the current thirty-year assault on the rights of working people began in earnest, and the divide between rich and poor deepened with the blessing of the political and corporate elites. But it is not a political tract, it’s a kick-ass novel that was nominated for the Edgar and the Anthony Awards, and made Booklist’s Best First Mysteries of the Year. The heroine, Filomena Buscarsela, is an immigrant who experienced tremendous poverty and injustice in her native Ecuador, and who grew up determined to devote her life to helping others. She tells us that she really should have been a priest, but since that avenue was closed to her, she chose to become a cop instead. The problem is that as one of the first Latinas on the NYPD, she is not just a woman in a man’s world, she is a woman of color in a white man’s world. And it’s hell. Filomena is mistreated and betrayed by her fellow officers, which leads her to pursue a case independently in the hopes of being promoted to detective for the Rape Crisis Unit. Along the way, she is required to enforce unjust drug laws that she disagrees with, and to betray her own community (which ostracizes her as a result) in an undercover operation to round up undocumented immigrants. Several scenes are set in the East Village art and punk rock scene of the time, and the murder case eventually turns into an investigation of corporate environmental crime from a working class perspective that is all-too-rare in the genre. And yet this thing is damn funny, too.
When the murder of her neighborhood bodega owner is labeled an "ethnic crime," former police officer Filomena Buscarsela is on the case. By the author of 23 Shades of Black. Reprint.
When street-smart Latina cop Filomena "Fil" Buscarsela investigates a glass factory in a rundown New York City neighborhood, she finds herself embroiled in a dangerous case involving toxic dumbing, crooked politicians, and murder, while struggling to balance her career with raising a small daughter and finding new romance. Reprint.
First she was a beat cop, then she was unemployed. Now, in Red House , K.j.a. Wishnia's dynamic Filomena Buscarsela has apprenticed herself to a New York City P.I. firm to put in the three years necessary to get her own P.I. license, something she needs to earn enough money to support herself and her daughter. Trouble is, she often agrees to take on sticky neighborhood cases pro bono rather than handle the big-bucks clients her bosses would prefer. While helping out her more "senior" colleagues with her own superior investigative techniques bred from years on the beat, Fil agrees to look into the disappearance of a young illegal immigrant. Then, witnessing the arrest of a neighbor on marijuana possession charges that nearly turns into a shootout with the police, Fil is roped into finding out what went wrong. Trying to balance charity cases like these with bread-and-butter paying cases, not to mention single motherhood, Fil is quickly in over her head dodging bullish cops, left-wing zealots, and corrupt landlords in their working class Queens neighborhood. All in all, it's a heady NY mix that mystery fans will applaud for its originality and suspense. K. j. a. Wishnia's mastery of the chaos of New York and the intense drama borne out of daily life in the melting pot of Queens makes for thrilling reading.
When Filomena Buscarsela takes her teen-aged daughter to see their extended family in Ecuador, it's more than a homecoming. Filomena hasn't been back in years, and the trip brings back memories of her previous life there as a revolutionary. Strangest of all, people keep asking her if her lover--who died in a hail of police gunfire in front of her very eyes--is alive. And then a priest is murdered, a man who years ago saved her life and helped her escape to America. It's an election year, and the dirty hand of politics seems to be everywhere, perhaps even in this senseless death. Filomena's investigation promises to lead her back to the very people she escaped, all those years ago. All in all, Wishnia provides a compelling look at the provenance of one of mystery fiction's most dynamic heroines.