Novelist reveals how teaching in Brooklyn has shaped his work
Brooklyn BookBeat
Following his acclaimed debut “Sacrifice Fly,” New York City public school teacher Tim O’Mara’s new novel “Crooked Numbers” (Minotaur Books) returns to the Williamsburg neighborhood to tell the story of Raymond Donne, a middle school teacher who has taken a break from his job to solve a mysterious killing.
O’Mara opens his book with a powerful scene, told through the eyes of Raymond: “It’s never easy looking into the face of a dead kid. Eyes that should be tracking a fastball or twinkling with mischief, shut forever. The mouth—perfectly suited for spittin’ out rhymes, lame homework excuses, or jokes about yo’ mama—never to be heard again.”
Raymond’s former student Douglas Lee was just shy of seventeen when he was murdered under the Williamsburg Bridge. Upon looking at Dougie’s dead body, Raymond recalls that the teen had everything going for him. “Dougie was going to be different,” thinks Raymond, comparing him to other teens who grow up in the projects of Williamsburg and become too distracted to graduate from high school. Dougie had earned a scholarship to a private school on the Upper West Side – he “was going to be a success story people on both sides of the river would want to take credit for,” Raymond explains. “And now someone had taken all that away.”
Dougie’s body is found beneath the bridge, destroyed by knife wounds. When the police find out that he had been in a gang, they don’t do much more investigating. But when Ray meets with Dougie’s mother, she seems certain that her son was never part of a gang, and asks Ray to begin his own investigation. A former cop, Ray does whatever possible to dig into the case – but before long, one of Dougie’s private school friends is killed and another winds up in the hospital.