No One Is Safe Summary: A Gritty 1987 Noir Thriller
TL;DR: The Short Version
In late September 1987, a slaughterhouse worker named Simon Noone walks the bloodstained cobblestones of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with a bullet scar in his skull and no memory of who he was before 1982.
Desperate to trace his own name, he turns to Nomi Pace, a tattooed ex-cop running a cut-rate private investigation practice from the tenement apartment below his.
What begins as a search for one man’s forgotten identity folds into a far more urgent case: a seven-year-old girl held hostage by mob figures in a redevelopment war over the High Line corridor.
Ellie Marney’s No One Is Safe follows the pair across nine days of street interrogations, nightclub surveillance, and escalating violence, while a file of police records waits to reveal what Simon really is.
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- Setting: New York City, autumn 1987 — the ungentrified Meatpacking District, mob-run nightclubs, and a High Line real estate grab.
- The pair: Simon Noone, an amnesiac slaughterhouse worker who speaks languages he cannot account for, and Nomi Pace, a former NYPD officer turned backstreet private investigator.
- The case: Seven-year-old Brittany Jackson has been abducted as leverage to force her mother into servicing a politically connected client.
- The twist: A fingerprint search reveals Simon’s real identity — Simon Gutmunsson, an escaped juvenile serial killer presumed dead in Central America.
- The outcome: Simon kills four mob enforcers to rescue the child. Nomi conceals what she knows and proposes a partnership.
- Core themes: Identity and reinvention, violent instinct versus restraint, maternal sacrifice, and backstreet justice where official authority fails.
No One Is Safe Summary
Spoiler warning: the following section recounts the full plot, including the ending.
The novel opens in October 1987 inside a locked warehouse storage room.
Simon Noone wakes with a blinding migraine beside seven-year-old Brittany Jackson, both of them prisoners of armed men gathering outside the door.
The story then steps back one week. Simon lives on Gansevoort Street and works pre-dawn shifts at Gennaro’s slaughterhouse.
He explains to Nomi Pace that he was pulled from the Usumacinta River in Guatemala in 1982 with a gunshot wound to the head, patched up by a village doctor named Richard Flores, with no identification and no memory.
Nomi initially refuses the case.
She changes her mind when Simon effortlessly translates a Sicilian court document for her — a pandering charge sheet against club manager Eric Lamonte, connected to her active client Solange Jackson.
Solange is an escort whose daughter Brittany was taken by Lamonte. He is holding the girl as collateral to force Solange into servicing an exclusive client known only as “Jeremy”.
Simon insists on accompanying Nomi to Flatbush to interview a mob gofer named Ricki Cevolatti. They arrive to find him dead — tied to a chair, his fingers severed cleanly with bolt cutters before his eyelids and tongue were cut away. Simon examines the body with unsettling composure.
Nomi makes an anonymous police tip and recovers Cevolatti’s stolen wallet. On the subway home she tells Simon about Brittany for the first time.
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On Sunday, a mob enforcer posing as a courier ambushes Nomi outside her apartment and beats her unconscious. Simon, who had covertly tailed her, cleans the wound and stitches her eyebrow using thread from their landlady Sofia Rosa’s sewing kit.
Nomi and Simon work the case through street contacts. Leo Farina, a small-time dealer at Hector’s Café, reveals that Cevolatti was stretching drug deliveries for a secret client.
A post office box key stamped “202” leads Simon to a stack of New York Times broadsheets hidden in the Farley Post Office Building.
At the Big Mouth nightclub, Simon charms bartender Janice D’Addario into naming photojournalist Daniel “Sully” Sullivan.
Sully’s French-Canadian security guard Max passes Simon information in French: Cevolatti leaked details about mob capo Arthur Galetti pressuring NYC Planning Commission Chair Gloria Axedale over waterfront rezoning along the High Line.
Simon also spots the enforcer who attacked Nomi — Claude Ameche — and, acting on an impulse he cannot control, stabs Ameche’s hand to a wooden banister with a paring knife.
Nomi secretly submits Simon’s fingerprints, gathered from a coffee mug, to her former NYPD partner Irma Rosado.
Meanwhile, Simon studies the broadsheets and finds a society page photograph linking Gloria Axedale to her drug-addicted son, David Jeremy Axedale — confirming that “Jeremy” is the senator’s son, held drugged in a Perry Street apartment as blackmail.
On Friday evening, Nomi returns home and opens the fingerprint file. It identifies Simon as Simon Gutmunsson, a wealthy, multilingual former juvenile serial killer from Massachusetts who murdered twenty-one people — including six law enforcement officers — before escaping custody and vanishing in Central America in 1982.
Simon breaks into her office through a window pane and reads the same file. Their confrontation is interrupted by a delivery: a cardboard box containing Brittany Jackson’s severed baby teeth.
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Nomi vomits, orders Simon out of her apartment, and prepares to hand the case to police. Simon returns to his room and cross-references the broadsheets, then catches Nomi on the stairs to share what he found. Nomi admits she stole Galetti’s property list from Detective Gaffney’s desk.
At midnight, Nomi tails Ray Dinkins to an isolated two-story warehouse off West Nineteenth Street near Chelsea Piers. She stakes it out in freezing rain for two hours before heading home to prepare.
On Saturday morning Simon warns her not to raid the warehouse alone and asks her to wait until his shift ends at eleven. Nomi oversleeps past noon, finds Simon’s apartment door open, blood on the linoleum, and his keys on the floor. Claude Ameche has taken him.
Nomi reloads her revolver, leaves Irma a voicemail detailing everything, and heads into the rainstorm alone.
Inside the warehouse storage room, Simon regains consciousness beside Brittany. Using raw ground beef, steak, and blood from his own arm, he disguises the girl to look dead and tells her to lie motionless in the corner. Brittany mentions her missing teeth simply fell out naturally days earlier.
Nomi picks the warehouse lock and spots Lamonte, Ameche, Gino Hart, and Ray Dinkins holding Simon. Dinkins discovers her, she shoots him, and her position is blown. Ameche grabs Simon as a shield. Dinkins strikes Nomi with a shovel, breaking her finger, and Hart duct-tapes her wrists.
Ameche reports that Brittany looks dead inside the storage room. Simon claims he killed the girl himself to keep the mobsters off balance.
Hart sets up an electric drill and battery cables, torturing Simon with the drill while he refuses to break. When Hart threatens to sever Nomi’s fingers with bolt cutters, Simon catches her eye and silently asks permission. Nomi tells him to “fuck them up”.
Simon erupts. He bites Gino Hart’s neck and drives the bolt cutters into Hart’s eye socket. Nomi knocks her chair into Ameche, and Simon strikes him in the head with the bolt cutters. He strangles Ray Dinkins and kills Lamonte with a box cutter, slashing his throat.
As sirens approach, Simon realizes he cannot be found at the scene. Nomi gives him Gino Hart’s car keys and tells him to run. He locks Nomi and Brittany inside the storage room so they can feign captivity, then drives off in Hart’s Ford Escort.
The NYPD breaks open the storage room and reunites Brittany with Solange. Detectives conclude Lamonte’s crew was wiped out in a rival hit by the Westies. Irma confirms Gloria Axedale’s son was rescued from Perry Street.
Nomi meets Simon in a private bathroom at the Riverview Hotel and stitches the slash on his chest. She tells him she will keep his past secret and proposes they work future cases together, channeling his instincts toward people who need help.
They walk home to Gansevoort Street. Nomi offers to cover his absence at the slaughterhouse and promises to check on him every four hours for concussion symptoms. Simon apologizes for the psychological mind games he used during the torture session.
Nomi forgives him, and Simon looks forward to the partnership ahead.
Characters In This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Simon Noone / Simon Gutmunsson | Amnesiac slaughterhouse worker and protagonist, later identified as an escaped juvenile serial killer who vanished in 1982. |
| Nomi Pace (Pacek) | Former NYPD officer running a low-cost private investigation practice from her Gansevoort Street apartment. |
| Brittany Jackson | Seven-year-old daughter of Solange Jackson, abducted by the mob as leverage. |
| Solange Jackson | Escort and Nomi’s client, forced into servicing a high-value client after her daughter’s abduction. |
| Eric Lamonte | Mob-connected manager of the Big Mouth nightclub who orchestrates Brittany’s kidnapping. |
| Claude Ameche | Lamonte’s enforcer, who attacks Nomi and later abducts Simon. |
| Gino Hart | Mob torturer who uses industrial tools including drills and bolt cutters. |
| Ray Dinkins | Low-level pimp and flunky for Lamonte. |
| Arthur Galetti | Elderly Gambino family capo buying Meatpacking District property and pressuring officials over rezoning. |
| Irma Rosado | Nomi’s former NYPD partner, who runs off-the-record background checks. |
| Malcolm Forest | Solange’s pimp, acting as an intermediary for Lamonte. |
| Ricki Cevolatti | Mob gofer whose torture and murder open the investigation after he leaks information. |
| Daniel “Sully” Sullivan | Upper East Side photojournalist bribed and threatened into silence. |
| Gloria Axedale | Former New York State Senator and NYC Planning Commission Chair who blocks Galetti’s rezoning requests. |
| David Jeremy Axedale | Gloria Axedale’s drug-addicted son, held in a Perry Street apartment as blackmail. |
| Sofia Rosa | Landlady at the Gansevoort Street tenement. |
| Dr. Richard Flores | Guatemalan village doctor who saved Simon’s life in 1982. |
| Calvin Gaffney | NYPD detective at the 10th Precinct who dislikes Nomi. |
| Felix Balter | Commanding officer of the 10th Precinct who previously forced Nomi off the force. |
| Leo Farina | Small-time drug dealer and friend of Ricki Cevolatti. |
| Max | Sully’s French-Canadian security guard who passes information to Simon in French. |
| Enrique / Eureka | Auto mechanic and drag performer who couriers messages between Irma and Nomi. |
| Janice D’Addario | Bartender at Chachi’s and Big Mouth who provides the lead to Sully. |
| Cherie | Receptionist at the Riverview Hotel. |
What Drives the Story
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| Identity, Memory, and Reinvention | Simon wakes in 1982 with no memory and builds a life under the name “Noone”. A fingerprint search replaces that constructed self with a documented criminal record. Nomi likewise lives detached from her family background and her former police role. |
| Violence, Instinct, and Control | Simon’s lethal efficiency surfaces involuntarily when he stabs Claude Ameche’s hand. Nomi manages trauma through ritualistic cutting and piercing. Mobsters like Lamonte and Hart apply violence as a business tool. |
| Maternal Devotion vs. Exploitation | Solange endures degrading work to protect her daughter. Brittany is held as human collateral. Galetti keeps Gloria Axedale’s addicted son drugged to force her rezoning approval. |
| Systemic Corruption and Backstreet Justice | Official authority is corrupt or indifferent. The 10th Precinct forced Nomi out, Detective Gaffney obstructs her, and the warehouse deaths are written off as a rival mob hit. |
| Trauma and Coping Mechanisms | Nomi self-harms with an obsidian arrowhead, Simon suffers chronic migraines and sensory overload, and Jeremy Axedale depends on drugs supplied by his captors. |
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Summary by Chapter
Spoiler warning: the following chapter breakdown reveals key plot events.
The book contains 32 sections: a Prologue followed by thirty-one numbered chapters, set chronologically between late September and October 1987.
Prologue. In October 1987, Simon wakes in a locked warehouse storage room with a severe head injury and meets seven-year-old Brittany Jackson, also imprisoned. Four mobsters gather outside the door. Simon prepares to fight while reassuring Brittany he has a plan.
Chapter One. One week earlier, Simon wakes on Gansevoort Street and heads to his shift at Gennaro’s slaughterhouse, reflecting on his 1982 rescue from a Guatemalan river. He intervenes in a hallway argument between Nomi Pace and a pimp named Malcolm Forest. He notices a business card on Nomi’s door identifying her as a private investigator.
Chapter Two. Simon follows Nomi and asks how an investigator traces a person with minimal information. In a crowded deli, he admits he is trying to trace himself and explains his amnesia. When Nomi notes he spoke Italian without realizing it, he asks for her professional help.
Chapter Three. Nomi collects an envelope from Irma Rosado via her contact Enrique and officially declines Simon’s case, which he accepts politely. Back in her office, she opens the envelope and finds charge sheets and photos of Eric Lamonte. Unable to read an Italian court document, she goes upstairs to Simon.
Chapter Four. Simon translates the document, a Sicilian court record detailing pandering charges against Lamonte. He suffers a migraine and takes medicine. Nomi notices the scar on his skull and agrees to take him on as a client under strict professional conditions.
Chapter Five. On Saturday, Nomi knocks to rain-check their meeting because she must interview Ricki Cevolatti in Flatbush. Simon insists on accompanying her. On the subway they discuss his five-year memory gap and her search of East Coast missing person reports. They find Cevolatti’s front door unlatched.
Chapter Six. They discover Cevolatti dead, tied to a chair and mutilated. Simon notes the fingers were severed cleanly with bolt cutters before the eyelids and tongue were removed. Nomi vomits in an alley and has Simon make an anonymous police tip. On the subway home she reveals Cevolatti’s stolen wallet and explains Brittany’s abduction.
Chapter Seven. Nomi leaves a taped votive candle at Our Lady of Guadalupe as a signal for Irma, then collects Simon’s notebooks and papers. She finds a post office box key stamped “202” among Cevolatti’s receipts and deduces he was killed for leaking information about Solange’s assignment. She calms herself with a self-piercing ritual.
Chapter Eight. Nomi meets Irma in a bodega back room and learns Lamonte works under capo Arthur Galetti. Irma warns the investigation is dangerous, but Nomi refuses to abandon the search. Walking away, she is grabbed by Simon, who has tailed her in disguise. At her apartment building she is ambushed by an enforcer posing as a courier.
Chapter Nine. Sofia Rosa helps Nomi inside, and Simon cleans and stitches her eyebrow using a needle, thread, and ulcer cream as anesthetic. Nomi shares intel about Galetti’s waterfront acquisitions along the High Line. Despite her injury, she insists on walking to Hector’s Café to question Leo Farina.
Chapter Ten. Nomi bluffs Leo Farina into revealing that Cevolatti complained about stretching drug deliveries for a secret client. Back home, she opens the courier’s envelope to find a blank sheet of paper — a threat. Simon stays on her couch overnight to monitor her for concussion symptoms.
Chapter Eleven. Simon describes a recurring nightmare about a white-haired girl leading him into a river, then draws a precise portrait of Nomi’s attacker. Nomi traces Ricki’s associate Janice D’Addario to Chachi’s. She finds Simon at the Florent Diner and recruits him to help track Janice down.
Chapter Twelve. Simon retrieves a stack of New York Times broadsheets from post office box 202. They search Janice’s abandoned Hudson Square apartment and find a Big Mouth matchbook. Leaving, they run into Detective Gaffney, and Simon deliberately spills hot coffee down his chest.
Chapter Thirteen. Simon works his slaughterhouse shift, suffers a migraine, and is revived with schnapps. Nomi helps him into a Saint Laurent suit from his closet for a night out. She tells him everyone in the Meatpacking District hides behind a mask. They enter the Big Mouth nightclub.
Chapter Fourteen. Inside the club, they spot Lamonte at a VIP table with Claude Ameche. Simon approaches the bar alone to avoid recognition and charms Janice into writing “Daniel Sullivan – Sully – Photos” on a napkin. Janice points him toward the DJ booth.
Chapter Fifteen. Sully admits knowing Cevolatti but acts evasive. His guard Max speaks to Simon in French and reveals Sully was bribed into silence after Cevolatti leaked details about Galetti pressuring Gloria Axedale over High Line rezoning. Leaving, Simon stabs Ameche’s hand to a stair railing and flees with Nomi.
Chapter Sixteen. Nomi meets Irma, who provides mug sheets identifying Ray Dinkins and torturer Gino Hart. Nomi hands over an index card with Simon’s fingerprints for an off-the-record search. Simon brings her research notes on Gloria Axedale and a potted plant as an apology.
Chapter Seventeen. Simon’s supervisor warns him a man came asking questions at the slaughterhouse, and Simon realizes Ameche is tracking him. He locks himself in his apartment. Nomi invites him to the Riverview Hotel to find a dealer named Mischa, and reveals she ran his fingerprints. A police raid separates them.
Chapter Eighteen. Drag performer Eureka guides Nomi out through the back kitchen corridors and hands her a document envelope from Irma. In a Bethune Street bagel shop, Nomi opens it and finds mug shots identifying Simon as Simon Gutmunsson, an escaped juvenile serial killer who murdered twenty-one people before vanishing in 1982.
Chapter Nineteen. Unaware of the file’s contents, Simon searches for Nomi and struggles with mounting anxiety. He breaks into her apartment through the fire escape, removes a window pane, finds the gray document wallet on her blotter, and reads the truth about himself.
Chapter Twenty. Nomi returns and performs a self-cutting ritual to manage stress. Simon confronts her with the file, and she details his record: twenty-one victims, an escape from a mental facility, and a presumed death in Central America. A cardboard box arrives containing Brittany’s severed baby teeth.
Chapter Twenty-One. Nomi decides to hand the case to police and orders Simon out, threatening to shoot him if he breaks in again. Simon examines the broadsheets and finds a society page photo identifying “Jeremy” as Gloria Axedale’s son. He catches Nomi on the stairs to share the discovery.
Chapter Twenty-Two. At midnight, Nomi finds drug dealer Mischa outside the Hellfire club and spots Ray Dinkins getting into a cab. She follows him to a two-story warehouse off West Nineteenth Street and stakes it out for two hours in freezing rain before heading home to prepare.
Chapter Twenty-Three. At 2:45 a.m., Nomi knocks on Simon’s door soaked and shivering and tells him she found the warehouse. As he removes her stitches, Simon warns her not to go alone and asks her to wait until his shift ends at eleven. They separate on the stairs.
Chapter Twenty-Four. Nomi oversleeps past noon and finds Simon’s apartment door open with blood on the linoleum and his keys on the floor, realizing Ameche has kidnapped him. She reloads her revolver, leaves Irma a voicemail with the warehouse location and everything she knows, and heads out into the rain.
Chapter Twenty-Five. Simon wakes in the storage room with Brittany and disguises her using raw ground beef, steak, and blood from his own arm, telling her to play dead. Brittany reveals her missing teeth fell out naturally days earlier. Simon prepares to face Lamonte’s men with only a box cutter.
Chapter Twenty-Six. Nomi picks the warehouse lock and sees Lamonte, Ameche, Hart, and Dinkins holding Simon. Dinkins discovers her, she shoots him, and Ameche grabs Simon as a shield. Dinkins breaks her finger with a shovel and Hart duct-tapes her wrists. Simon claims he killed Brittany himself.
Chapter Twenty-Seven. Simon maintains the ruse that he murdered the girl to drop extra weight. Hart tortures him with an electric drill and battery cables without breaking him. When Hart threatens Nomi’s fingers with bolt cutters, Simon silently asks her permission, and she tells him to “fuck them up”.
Chapter Twenty-Eight. Simon bites Hart’s neck and drives the bolt cutters into his eye socket. Nomi knocks her chair into Ameche, and Simon strikes him in the head. He strangles Dinkins and kills Lamonte with a box cutter, slashing his throat. Nomi cuts her bindings and fights off Ameche.
Chapter Twenty-Nine. Nomi tells Simon to stop as he comes out of his trance. Brittany emerges unharmed, her gory appearance revealed as ground beef and blood. Hearing sirens, Nomi gives Simon Gino Hart’s car keys and has him lock her and Brittany in the storage room before driving away.
Chapter Thirty. The NYPD breaks open the storage room and reunites Brittany with Solange. Detectives conclude the crew died in a rival Westies hit. Irma confirms Gloria Axedale’s son was rescued. Nomi meets Simon in a Riverview bathroom, stitches his chest wound, and proposes they work together as partners.
Chapter Thirty-One. Simon and Nomi walk home to Gansevoort Street in the evening air. She offers to cover his absence at the slaughterhouse and promises to check on him every four hours. Simon apologizes for his mind games during the torture session, and Nomi forgives him.
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Crime Thriller / Historical Noir / Psychological Thriller
- Core Narrative Tropes: Amnesiac protagonist, unlikely duo, mob extortion, secret dark past, vigilante justice
- Tone & Atmosphere: Gritty, visceral, dark, atmospheric 1980s urban noir
- Primary Conflict: Simon and Nomi’s mission to rescue seven-year-old Brittany Jackson from a mob syndicate, complicated by Simon’s uncovered identity as an escaped serial killer
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced, chronologically driven across nine days, built on clues, street interrogations, and escalating violent encounters
- Book Structure: A Prologue followed by thirty-one numbered chapters, spanning late September to October 1987
- ISBN: 978-1662533143 (ISBN-10: 1662533144)
- Pages: 301
- Series: Book 1 of 2 in the Noone Thriller series
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