It’s 1975 and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book.
That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph’s first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.
Alex Segura is a busy man!
It seems like every few months he’s got a new book out, and he’s writing an absolute TON of comics at the moment (a couple of which I’ve been keeping up with, like STAR WARS: THE BATTLE OF JAKKU and DICK TRACY).
I’ve previously read his excellent Star Wars novel POE DAMERON: FREE FALL and I read SILENT CITY, the first book in his Miami-based crime fiction series (funny enough, Segura cleverly puts SECRET IDENTITY in the same world as SILENT CITY, just decades earlier!)
But something about SECRET IDENTITY had really been calling to me (the second book in this series, ALTER EGO was recently released too!), and oof…I just loved this book completely. It feels silly to say it just a few weeks into January, but this is for sure an early favorite read of the year for me!
The story is primarily set in New York City in 1975, with some flashbacks to our main character’s childhood in Miami.
Carmen Valdez is working as a secretary for a comic book company called Triumph. It’s a fledgling operation with few hits to its name. Marvel & DC rule the day, but Carmen is still thrilled to be working in this industry that means so much to her: comics were her escape from a pretty rough childhood.
Still, as a queer, Cuban-American woman working in a field utterly dominated by men…Carmen deals with a lot of shit. But she gets an opportunity to work on a pitch for a new comic with a coworker named Harvey Stern. They collaborate on an idea that was mostly Carmen’s (The Legendary Lynx…the book actually features a lot of pages from the comic & you can buy a trade paperback too! Really cool for them to put so much into crafting a vintage-looking comic book for this novel!)
The comic book is a surprise hit, but of course…Carmen’s involvement remains a secret. However misogynistic the comic book industry currently is, here Segura paints a picture of a deeply patriarchal world, struggling to move beyond the gender roles of the 50’s and 60’s. It’s a fucking mess, really. And Carmen really starts to struggle (rightfully so) with the success of the Lynx, and getting so close to the kind of recognition she deserves only to have the door closed in her face.
Things take a WILD turn in this story when Harvey is murdered in his apartment. And it’s clear that it wasn’t a random killing. Carmen starts trying to unravel the mystery of who Harvey really was, and why someone would want him dead.
This book does a ton of things well, but perhaps none more so than transporting the reader to a distinct time & location in masterful detail. This is a darker, grimier, more dangerous New York City than its present day counterpart. And you just feel it, seeping into your pores. But as dangerous as the city can feel in SECRET IDENTITY, Segura also beautifully captures the excitement of the place, too. The city lives & breathes, it’s a place that feels totally electric & alive, and full of possibility. It’s such a cliche to say that the location of a story feels like another character, but I can’t think of a better example of that than NYC in this book!
I really couldn’t have loved this any harder. Oof. Carmen is such a vividly-real, messy character. In a lot of ways, this book is about her struggling to make connections. She has a cool punk roommate named Molly, but they are just barely friends (though their friendship really blooms throughout the book). And the type of sexism she faces at work means she needs to keep people at a distance. But she works hard & finds people to rely on and trust, even as things get murkier and more mysterious around her.
I just really felt for Carmen a lot. I’ve actually worked in an industry where the people who sign the checks take advantage of the passion of the folks doing all the hard work, so watching Carmen navigate the world of comics was really relatable to me.
Also, it’s worth noting…yes, this book is definitely a love letter to comic books. As I mentioned, Alex Segura is writing a ton of comics at the moment (for various different companies), and reading this book, you get a sense that he has a deep reverence for & understanding of the history of the comic book industry. But you definitely don’t need to be a comic book reader to enjoy this! SECRET IDENTITY is a deeply nuanced, historical/literary mystery, and Segura meticulously and thoughtfully creates a vibrant cast of characters to carry the story. This was such an incredible book! Can’t wait to dive into ALTER EGO soon!
Grimdark Dad 