False Negative is Joseph Koenig's fourth novel and his first after a twenty-year hiatus. As Koenig himself has explained, the story is focused on the experiences of a young reporter and editor for the last of the true crime pulp magazines and is based in part on his own experiences. Koenig has even stated that, "because fiction has to be believable," he had to "tone down much of what really went on on the dick books." The reality, just as in the novel, was that few of the criminals who went to prison emerged rehabilitated and many blamed the true crime magazines that published their photographs and story for their convictions and sentences. As Koenig explains, being a true crime editor gave him a "cautious view of the world" and he often ended up wondering when on crowded subway cars how many of the people there literally might have gotten away with murder.

Although published in 2012, this novel is thoroughly placed in the pulp-era of the early-fifties in Atlantic City. It focuses on a young crime reporter, Adam Jordan, who yearns for his big break, only to find that as he chases a story about a young woman's body found on a beach and he phonied up another story that he did not consider worthy of his time (a politician's speech), he loses his reporter's job as the politician he did not bother watching drops dead of a heart attack while giving his speech. The focus is also on the seamy side of 1950's Atlantic City. Every girl who ends up there from whatever farming town she started out in yearns to become Miss America, but most end up slinging hash or "working" invitation-only parties for sleazy pimps and other promoters. The young reporter and the women he meet are cynical. Jordan ends up working as true crime reporter and editor, still chasing down true crime stories as they happen, following leads from every story in the paper and chasing down women who believe he is like every two-bit sleazeball they've met.

The book flows well and reads quickly. And, includes an interview with Louis Armstrong as Jordan seeks information on a missing backup singer who no one cares is missing, after all backup singers never stick around and the police aren't going to waste their time on a missing Black girl in the early 1950's mileu. The book also casts a light on how interracial couples were viewed at that time.
At the beginning, Jordan himself discovers a body on a beach. "Wet sand coated her face, which was turned away from the rain. She was barefoot, in a pleated skirt and cashmere sweater. A silk kerchief was tied across her mouth, and her ankles, knees, and thighs were bound with a single piece of rope that was also looped around her throat." And, "She was a beautiful woman dead for several hours whose looks hadn't begun to fade." "The dead woman had flame red hair, and a shape on the neat side of voluptuous." What did this woman mean for Adam Jordan, cub reporter that he was? "He would eulogize her with tenderness. In the squalid circumstances of her death was a story more compelling than Conrad Palmer's. He would polish its lurid detail into a cautionary tale, every parent's nightmare. It would be his ticket out of Atlantic City and into journalism's major leagues."
Who was the dead woman? Jordan finds out that Suzie Chase was in Atlantic City to be Miss America. She was a former Miss Teenage Garden State and Miss Monmouth County. But, Jordan thought about it and "Suzie Chase was too good-looking to be Miss America. Miss Americas were the breed standard for the earnest wholesomeness Jordan believed was best left to kindergarten teachers, homecoming queens, and rodeo cowgirls for whom high-breasted, long-legged sauciness were professional poison."

All in all, False Negative is a well-written and compelling story that dips its toes into the saucy world of 1950's Atlantic City and the reporters working for the true crime magazines that had their heyday many years ago. It is a good story and well-worth reading. Highly recommended and a fine addition to the Hard Case Crime series. ( )

Hard boiled serial murder novel, set mostly in the Atlantic City of the 1950s. The author does a good job of writing like the pulp detective magazines of the day. ( )

This book started of ok, But then just went off in all different directions. Adam Jordan is a reporter who gets a job working for a Detective magazine. Some beauty queens have been murdered Adam helps investigate this it turns out they have been killed by a photographer called Pix Pixley. Didnt really like this book to be honest. ( )