The Old Turk's Load

Angelo DiNoto is the most powerful crime lord in New Jersey, his empire sustained by pure heroin from the poppies of an old Turkish farmer. That is, until a $5 million dollar shipment goes missing.

Richard Mundi, a shady developer, sees the lost heroin as capital infusion for his failing business. His daughter Gloria, literally in bed with would-be revolutionaries, thinks it’s her ticket out. “Mailman”, a long-time postal clerk dying of cancer, believes finding the heroin would be perfect ending to a failed life. Add in punch-drunk P.I. Kelly, hired by Mundi to tail Gloria, Kelly’s young protégé, two brothers working as DiNoto’s enforcers, and a conflicted collections agent, and you have an Elmore Leonard-esque cast of characters running rampant—until all threads lead to an unforgettable showdown over the old Turk’s load.

A sprawling, classic noir crime novel set amid the 1967 Newark riots in which $5 million worth of heroin goes missing, and every cop, criminal, do-gooder, and lowlife will do anything to find it.

R. C. BRAY has performed Off-Broadway in New York City, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and many stages in between. In addition to audiobooks, his work is heard in promos for The Biography Channel, A&E and CNBC. He lives in New England.

GREGORY GIBSON has been an antiquarian bookseller since 1976. He writes the influential book trade blog “Bookman’s Log” and is the author of several non-fiction books, including the powerful and widely acclaimed Gone Boy. He lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Cork City, Ireland, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, but his imagination inhabits a hard-boiled vision of 1960s Manhattan.