Cooper is a small town where everyone is on the take. From small town farmers all the way to detectives and coroners, no one is above the bribery of money or fame. Our MC is dirty and recently transfered to Cooper. He gets a rough, brutal introduction in to his new police department and drinks his way through his days from there.

I didn't find the MC particularly easy to like or enjoy. I did like the feeling that this was an interview and the little breaks of someone telling the story. This is a brutal story, full of the absolutely worst people possible - somehow all in one small town, bumping against each other. There were a few surprises but I can't say I liked this one. Just wasn't for me.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Scottish lawyer and author Tariq Ashkanani is an exciting new voice on the crime scene. His debut, WELCOME TO COOPER, takes us into a troubled small town and the lives of its inhabitants. Gritty, page-turning crime fiction. I'll definitely read more from this author.

I was a little hesitant about this book in the beginning, as the trope of the disgraced detective is starting to feel a little overdone, but I was pleasantly surprised. This wasn't your typical disgraced detective story either- Ashkanani went very dark and gritty with this one, which I ended up absolutely loving. There were some good twists, a few that I didn't see coming.

Not as much a review as a summation of my experience: WELCOME TO COOPER isn't bad, but it simply didn't hold my attention, and I gave up at about the 70% mark. I think I was expecting a more rural novel and not an urban police procedural. Not the author's fault. It's fine as far as it goes — slick and professional but nothing transcendent — but was simply not a good fit with my reading taste.

Loved most of this book. Not entirely satisfied by the end but overall it was very good.
The characters were all very interesting, and the writing style was brilliant.
Might check out more stuff from this author.

Full review to come on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy.

I wasn't sure what to expect but I really ended up digging this book. It took awhile for me to get into but the more I read, the more I like it. I would 100% for sure read another book by Ashkanani again.

Clever, dark and always engrossing Noir thriller.

When Detective Thomas Levine rats out a fellow officer he is persona non grata in the DC police department. Not that he is bothered but he is offered a new start in Cooper, he brings few possessions but a great deal of internal conflict.

He is almost beyond hope. Little self-respect and borderline self-destruct mode. A shocking murder throws him straight into police work, a fresh start but we quickly find he remains stuck in DC and haunted by his past.

Drowning his sorrows at a local bar he finds a kindred spirit in the bartender’s insight into how things are in Cooper. Mary says “No one comes to Cooper by choice, Officer.”

The unravelling of a past that removes the joy of a new day and limits thoughts of hope in any brighter tomorrow. Thomas is a flawed person and his tarnished past restricts his ability to make a fresh start. Yet it is written in such a way that as readers we fully engage with his story and want him to succeed. A broken detective but a character we can identify with. but rarely see in crime fiction in a credible roll.

Well plotted and totally believable. The further Thomas seems to go off the rails the more we hope for a means of redemption. As he tells his story you wonder if he can change or has he been masking his true nature all along. We want our heroes to be better than the villains not better at getting away with things.

Guaranteed to keep you wanting to find out more and surprised by the twists and turns the story takes. Really good story showing a darker reality than we usually see but written in a fashion that makes us less judgemental and questioning how much we would compromise in Cooper.

Cooper, Nebraska, is forgettable and forgotten, a town you’d only stumble into if you’d taken a seriously wrong turn. Like Detective Thomas Levine’s career has. But when a young woman is found lying in the snow, choked to death, her eyes gouged out, the disgraced detective is Cooper’s only hope for restoring peace and justice.

For Levine, still grieving and guilt-ridden over the death of his girlfriend, his so-called “transfer” from the big city to this grubby backwater has always felt like a punishment. And when his irascible new partner shoots their prime suspect using Levine’s gun, all hope of redemption is shattered. With the case in chaos, and both blackmail and a violent drug cartel to contend with, he finds himself in a world of trouble.

It gets worse. The real killer is still out there, and he’s got plans for Detective Levine. And Cooper may just be the perfect place to get away with murder.

The character depth was amazing! Just how far will you go to do the wrong things for the right reasons!

Published by Thomas & Mercer on October 1, 2021

Cooper is a desperate, desolate town in Nebraska, a place where people live when they are out of options. For being a nothing town, Cooper is a hotbed of criminal activity. Much of it is controlled by a gangster in Omaha named Marchenko, who also controls a local police detective named Joe Finch.

Joe is partnered with a new arrival in Cooper, a former DC detective who made drug busts, stole the drugs, and used them recreationally with his girlfriend before she died. Thomas Levine saved his skin by giving evidence against his partner in DC, who was selling his share of the stolen drugs. With help he probably didn’t deserve, Thomas found a new home in Cooper. History repeats itself as Thomas discovers that his new partner is corrupt.

Joe commits a murder, frames Thomas for it, and uses the threat of Thomas’ arrest to coerce Thomas’ assistance in an armed robbery. The man Joe kills may have murdered a woman whose eyes were gouged out — the latest in a series of similar murders — but Thomas comes to believe that the murder victim wasn’t the killer at all. Thomas attempts to find the true killer while dealing with his corrupt partner and a state cop who threatens to expose Thomas’ crimes.

The novel is written in the first person, although it isn’t always narrated by the same person. Most of it is narrated by Thomas, but the shifting perspectives add another layer of interest as the reader tries to identify each storyteller. Only at the novel’s end do we understand the significance of the narration.

Welcome to Cooper initially struck me as an attempt to emulate the classic noir of the 1930s to 1950s, but this is noir on steroids. The story is gruesome and gory at times, but not particularly graphic. Life is bleak for Thomas. He remind us of his darkness more often than is necessary. He blames himself for his girlfriend’s death and for all the other tragedy that comprises his life. Near the novel’s end, he seeks a form of redemption but Tariq Ashkanani doesn’t give Thomas the kind of life that leaves room for a lightened soul.

At its best, Welcome to Cooper is the story of two damaged loners who briefly find each other. We don’t see much of Cooper — this isn’t an atmospheric novel — but we’re told that the town is pit, a haven for the lost and abandoned. A bartender named Mary illustrates the kind of life that condemns someone to Cooper. Mary befriends Thomas, almost against his wishes. They form the kind of momentary connection that can change a life just by suggesting possibilities, even if the possibilities will never be realized.

Welcome to Cooper grew on me. I wasn’t expecting much after the first chapter, but as the story accumulates force, it becomes impossible to look away from the crash and burn that the reader anticipates.

Ashkanani’s characterization of Mary and Thomas is the novel’s strength. The key villain, a killer who Thomas ends up chasing, is an underdeveloped stereotype of evil, but the relentlessly bleak plot is compelling in a cringeworthy way. “Life sucks, then you die” isn’t the philosophy that drives bestsellers, but it describes the reality of certain noir novels, including Welcome to Cooper. Yet the novel’s ending, while far from happy, does suggest the slightest bit of hope for a better future for those who survive the present, the possibility that even the worst villains might feel empathy under the right circumstances, and the recognition that connections with other people, even fleeting connections, are all that really matter.

RECOMMENDED

Cooper, Nebraska. Detective Levine has been transferred to this less than desirable location. This is his punishment for robbing drug dealers and then selling the drugs .. to mostly other cops. He ratted out his partner and instead of charging him with crimes or just firing him, they sent him here... for redemption, if nothing else.

On his first work day, he and his new partner are called to investigate when a young woman is found in the snow, strangled, eyes gouged out.

There is, however, a prime suspect and Levine's new partner shoots him.. with Levine's gun...all hope of redemption is in pieces.

I thought there was great promise, as the plot seemed compelling. But it fell flat for me. I did not like the author's style of writing. It was like someone looking at me, but directing conversation to someone who stood behind me. The story line bounced from now to the past and back again, with no warning, making it hard to follow. It's a first person narration but tends to be tedious. The characters were not likeable, actually they had no redeeming qualities .. nothing I could hold onto. A this is the author's debut book, I wish him the best and hope his next book is better.

Many thanks to the author / Amazon Publishing UK / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction/police procedural. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

2.5 STARS

Thank you Netgalley, Thomas & Mercer, and Author Tariq Ashkanani for this ARC.

This took me a while to get into, get used to. It's a unique telling of a small town that holds a deep, hidden pit of dark secrets. The narrator telling the story is unknown until the end but he admits a lot, confessing. The narrator rubbed me the wrong way--I despise the tough guy character he maintained. The story was intriguing once I managed to get used to the writing. The ending was EXPLOSIVE!

Solid story, full of suspense. Interesting and realistic characters. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

An absolutely brilliant noir thriller, bleak and disturbing with a cast of unforgettable characters set in a small nowhere town where darkness awaits.

I absolutely devoured this - it is pretty difficult to put down once you pick it up and it is oh so clever, playing with character and perception throughout. Excellent quality of writing and when I put it down I was beautifully tired with a sense of reading satisfaction that doesn't come along often.

A really great read, a bit dastardly and entirely compelling. Highly Recommended.

What’s an Edinburgh solicitor doing writing neo-noir set in Cooper, Nebraska? Ah, but that’s the beauty of fiction, isn’t it - it’s transporting power. The closest to teleportation our civilization may ever come.
What’s in Cooper, Nebraska? Not much, actually, it’s a typical small-town USA and much like Nebraska of popular imagination it’s as down and dirty and bleak as this story depicts it. Not the sort of place you’d end up in by choice, but then again, the novel’s protagonist, a disgraced detective Levine, doesn’t really get much of a choice. The man failed pretty epically in Washington, DC and, for his sins, is sent to the purgatorial Cooper, where he promptly gets involved in another ethically and morally questionable situation, dirty cops, a serial killer and all.
Levine might have thought Cooper to be just a backwater nowhere, but it’s more than that, the murky waters hide a quicksand beneath them…the more he tries to come clean, the more it drags him under. And that’s basically the story without giving away too much.
I categorized it as neo-noir, but it doesn’t quite maintain the same class throughout, it’s darker, heavier, dirtier, and got a hypermasculine tough-guy sort of presence that took some getting used to. Overall, and especially for a debut and especially for such a far stretch (for a solicitor…nothing about law here, just lawlessness), it’s decently done, even if over seasoned with a very specific blend of tough-guy testosterone. Read pretty quickly and entertained sufficiently. Bleak, very bleak. You can tag it…a crime drama as bleak as Nebraska. Thanks Netgalley.

This book was sent to me electronically by Netgalley for review. The characters are intriguing…the story interesting…the author is excellent at the craft of weaving a story. Although at times, the story moves somewhat slowly, it picks up and comes to a resolution that is plausible…

Perhaps An Insignificant Place….?
Cooper, Nebraska, is perhaps an insignificant place. Or is it? Is it, perhaps, the perfect place to commit the perfect crime ? Detective Thomas Levine, in Cooper under duress, may just be about to find out. Told with more than just a touch of pulp this is entertaining, hard hitting, crime fiction and one to watch.

Straight up, this one will have its detractors.

You see, it's a very gritty crime novel and the characters are not very good people. (But, like I said, it's crime!)

If you're the kind of person who needs a hero to root for, the book may not be for you. However, if you want a book with edge and characters who are not only flawed, but deeply wrong, here's your book.

The story moves well and, before you know it, you're in deep with our main character and feeling somewhat complicit in everything. The author does a good job of making the book uncomfortable.

I enjoyed it. I felt a little wrong about that, but it's a good read.

I so wanted to enjoy this book a debut by the author but as much as I tried and I really did try, it just did not grip me at all.
I found the story slow and couldn't take to the characters at all.

Thank you Amazon Publishing UK for Welcome To Cooper by Tariq!

Detective Thomas Levine... His career is going downhill and fast!
He run the small run down town in Cooper Nebraska.
Not much exciting stuff happens here in Cooper. Until a woman is found choked to death with missing eyes!
He was transferred from the city to this dump in the middle of no mans land!
Our worn out Detective Levine is still grieving the death of his girlfriend.
Thomas Levine finds himself in a world of trouble when his new partner ends up shooting their suspect.
And he used Levine’s gun!
His life only gets worse because the killer is out there little does Detective Levine know this killer has something planned for him!!!.

This was such a phenomenal story! A twisted, wild one at that!
Welcome to Cooper is the kind of book that’ll keep you up late until you finish it!
So much going on, great characters with witty, intelligent dialogue, tons of secrets and lots of suspense. Definitely a unique plot, it’ll keep you guessing.
Absolutely loved it!