In him, the passion of fatherhood had taken on a mystery beyond what could ever be described to someone else. It had become heroic in its refusal to accept what all fathers had heretofore accepted, that they could not rid the world of its dark snares, nor provide safe passage through them for their children.
--Thomas H. Cook, The City When It Rains (1991, The Overlook Press)
Cook writes what are sometimes called "crime novels," though often they have little or no crime in them and could be more accurately called something like meditations on the human condition, with all its negatives and positives. In The City When It Rains freelance photographer David Corman becomes obsessed with a dead woman, just as Detective Mark McPherson did in Otto Preminger's film Laura (1944), from Vera Caspary's book. Sarah Rosen jumped out of a window and Corman investigates her life, eventually finding and talking to her father and learning about Sarah's childhood and what actually happened. At the same time Corman is fighting to keep the custody of his own nine-year-old daughter.
Cook's style is both vivid and melancholic, underscoring that there may not be much we can do about fate but that nonetheless we should keep trying. Cook has an impressive feel for the streets, denizens and even the weather of New York, where the wealthiest and poorest live almost next to each other. Cook intelligently does not cut away from Corman, so that we only know what he knows, as he goes from precinct stations to morgues to the apartments of those who knew Sarah at her best and at her worst.
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