Synopses & Reviews
This Irish bad-boy thriller -- set in the hardest streets of New York City -- brims with violence, greed, and sexual betrayal. "I didn't want to go to America, I didn't want to work for Darkey White. I had my reasons. But I went."
So admits Michael Forsythe, an illegal immigrant escaping the Troubles in Belfast. But young Michael is strong and fearless and clever -- just the fellow to be tapped by Darkey, a crime boss, to join a gang of Irish thugs struggling against the rising Dominican powers in Harlem and the Bronx. The time is pre-Giuliani New York, when crack rules the city, squatters live furtively in ruined buildings, and hundreds are murdered each month. Michael and his lads tumble through the streets, shaking down victims, drinking hard, and fighting for turf, block by bloody block.
Dodgy and observant, not to mention handy with a pistol, Michael is soon anointed by Darkey as his rising star. Meanwhile Michael has very inadvisably seduced Darkey's girl, Bridget -- saucy, fickle, and irresistible. Michael worries that he's being followed, that his affair with Bridget will be revealed. He's right to be anxious; when Darkey discovers the affair, he plans a very hard fall for young Michael, a gambit devilish in its guile, murderous in its intent.
But Darkey fails to account for Michael's toughness and ingenuity or the possibility that he might wreak terrible vengeance upon those who would betray him.
A natural storyteller with a gift for dialogue, McKinty introduces to readers a stunning new noir voice, dark and stylish, mythic and violent -- complete with an Irish lilt.
Review
"McKinty...is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream. Top-drawer." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The dark, brooding tone is reminiscent of Dennis Lehane, but McKinty has yet to achieve Lehane's depth and complexity." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[E]xuding toughness and moral ambiguity, his fiction debut is crawling with down-and-out strivers who do what they must to survive." Library Journal
Review
"[P]erfectly captures the feel of noir drama....Wonderfully evocative." Booklist
About the Author
Adrian McKinty grew up in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He studied politics at Oxford University and after a failed legal career he moved to New York City in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, mailman, door-to-door salesman, construction worker, bartender, rugby coach, bookstore clerk, and schoolteacher. He lives in Colorado and is working on a new novel.