Good Neighbors

In some territories known as Acts of Violence, Ryan David Jahn’s crime novel with thriller elements, Good Neighbors (2009), tells the story of a woman’s final few hours before she is brutally murdered outside her apartment building. Winner of the 2010 CWA Blood Dagger, critics praise the menacing atmosphere of Good Neighbors. A bestselling American author, Jahn left school at sixteen and worked as a janitor before serving in the US Army. He also spent time working in the film and television industry. Good Neighbors is his debut novel.

Good Neighbors takes place in Queens, New York, on March 13, 1964. The story begins just before four o’clock in the morning. Katrina Marino, a young woman in her late 20s, is the night manager at a local sports bar. Her family, who lives nearly 400 miles away, are always asking for her to come home. They don’t like New York City and they don’t think it’s safe, but Katrina enjoys her independence.

The story opens as Katrina approaches her car in the mostly empty parking lot. Noticing that she has a flat tire, she doesn’t worry because she knows her way around a car. However, she feels that someone is watching her. She knows she is probably being paranoid, but she can’t shake the feeling.



As she drives home, she misses a car accident by seconds. A Fiat 600 runs a stoplight and crashes into a passing truck, but the truck driver, who didn’t do anything wrong, flees the scene. Katrina cannot imagine why the truck driver sped off because now he looks as though he is the driver who caused the crash. She never finds out what happens to the Fiat driver, because she does not have long left to live.

Katrina spends her last few moments in the parking lot of her apartment complex, the Hobart Apartments. She pulls into the lot and passes her neighbor, Frank. She doesn’t know what he is doing out so early in the morning, but she assumes he’s working a new job. Katrina doesn’t give Frank’s movements much thought—it’s four in the morning, she’s tired, and she has to work again in a few hours.

Just a few seconds before Katrina approaches her front door, the police drive by, making her feel safe momentarily. She doesn’t realize the police car is one of the last things she will ever see. Just before she unlocks her door, she hears something behind her, and when she turns around, she is brutally stabbed. The struggle sets off its own chain of events within the Hobart Apartments.



Although Katrina eventually dies, she doesn’t die until the end of the book. The narrative shifts focus from Katrina’s struggle to the neighbors nearby, occasionally returning to Katrina as she fights for her life. It is left up to the readers to surmise whether Katrina would still be alive if any of her neighbors had come downstairs to help her.

Meanwhile, as Katrina fights outside, Jahn introduces readers to various other characters. The neighbors all hear the commotion, but no one wants to call the police. Most neighbors assume that another neighbor will make the call, and they don’t want to tie up the telephone lines. Some neighbors, however, simply don’t want to get involved because they have enough troubles of their own.

Frank is one of the more significant characters because he knows Katrina well. He’s out driving at four in the morning because he just had an argument with his wife. She is convinced that she hit another vehicle on the way home from work, and she thinks that she killed someone. Frank doesn’t know what to do, and so he goes out to see what happened. This accident is unrelated to the accident Katrina saw between the Fiat 600 and the truck.



The paramedic who attends the scene with the Fiat 600 is David White. He arrives determined to save the driver at all costs because that is a paramedic’s job. However, when he sees who the driver is, he doesn’t want to save him. The driver is his former teacher who sexually abused him. David must choose between the right thing to do for his job and the right thing to do for himself.

When the police and paramedics eventually arrive at Katrina’s apartment building, David is on the team. He views Katrina as an innocent young woman who doesn’t deserve to die. Despite his best efforts, he cannot save her, and he wonders if there is any point in being a paramedic.

The murderer, William, is a serial killer who cannot help himself. Always targeting women, he can’t believe the police haven’t caught him yet. He wonders how many women he will kill before his actions catch up with him, but if the bystanders at the Hobart Apartments are any indication, he will be out on the streets, safe from detection, for some time yet.