Presenting Artie Cohen, Reggie Nadelson's streetsmart, good-looking New York cop, with a supporting cast that includes Artie's glamorous girl Lily Hanes, and his gnarly superior Sonny Lippert. Russian by birth, Artie has a taste for girls and jazz and a secret past. In Red Mercury Blues he has scarcely returned from a month's leave and thoughts of quitting his job when he becomes involved with a case that drags him painfully back into that past.
His investigations take him first into the heart of the Brighton Beach Russian mafia, and then deeper into the terrifying world of atomic smuggling and the secrets of the lethal but elusive substance known as Red Mercury.