A chilling true story of murder and betrayal on Manhattan's gritty West Side It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window. Under their reign, Hell's Kitchen becomes a place where death literally rains from the sky. But when Mickey goes down for a murder he didn't commit, he suspects his friend has sold him out. He returns the favor, breaking the underworld's code of silence and testifying against his gang in open court. From one of the creators of NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street comes an incredible true story of what it means to survive in the... Views: 20
CONCERNING ROGER SHERINGHAM ROGER SHERINGHAM was born in 1891, in a small English provincial town near London where his father practised as a doctor; Roger therefore grew up in a familiar atmosphere of drugs and medical talk. He was an only child, and was educated in the usual English way for the sons of professional men; that is to say, he went first to a local day school, then at the age of ten as a boarder to a preparatory school, in Surrey; then at fourteen he won a small scholarship at one of the ancient smaller public schools which despise Eton and Harrow just as thoroughly as Eton and Harrow ignore them; and finally, in 1910, he went up to Merton College, Oxford, where he failed to win a scholarship. At Oxford he read classics and history, and took a second class in each, but distinguished himself more conspicuously by winning his blue in his last year for golf; he played rugby football for his college, but did not shine at it, and he lazed most of his summer terms away in a punt on the Cherwell. He was just able to take his degree before the war shut Oxford down like an extinguisher. Roger served from 1914 to 1918 in a sound line regiment, was wounded twice, not very seriously, and though recommended twice for the Military Cross and once for the D.S.O. was awarded nothing, which privately annoyed him a good deal. After the war he spent a couple of years trying to find out what nature had intended him to do in life; and it was only after spasmodic interludes as a schoolmaster, in business, and even as a chicken farmer, that by the merest chance he bought some pens, some ink, and some paper, and at enormous speed dashed off a novel. To his extreme surprise the novel jumped straight into the best - selling ranks both in England and America, and Roger had found his vocation. He exchanged his pens for a typewriter, engaged a secretary, and got down to it. He was always careful to treat his writing as a business and nothing else. Privately he had quite a poor opinion of his own books, combined with a horror of ever becoming like some of the people with whom his new work brought him into contact: authors who take their own work with such deadly seriousness, talk about it all the time, and consider themselves geniuses beside whom Wells and Kipling and Sinclair Lewis are just amateurs. For this reason he was always careful to keep his hobbies well in the front of his mind; and his chief hobby was criminology, which appealed not only to his sense of the dramatic but to his feeling for character. It had never occurred to him that he himself might have any gifts as a detective, though a love of puzzles of all kinds had been handed down to him by his father; so that when on a visit to a country house called Layton Court in 1924 his host was discovered one morning dead in his library, in circumstances pointing to suicide, it did not occur to Roger at once to make any investigations on his own account. It was only when certain points struck him as curious that his inquisitive nature asserted itself. The same thing happened at a town called Wychford, which was in a ferment over the arrest of the French wife of one of its leading citizens on a charge of poisoning her husband. The woman and her husband were both complete strangers to him, but Roger on the evidence in the newspapers decided that she was innocent, and really more for his own gratification than anything else set out to prove it. This case brought him the recognition of Scotland Yard and a certain amount of publicity; with the result that his hobby developed and he was soon in a position to take an active part in any case which interested him. Just as Roger - the - novelist had determined to avoid becoming like the worse specimens of that profession, so Roger - the - detective was anxious not to resemble the usual pompous and irritating detective of fiction - or rather, one should say, of the fiction at the time when he began his career, for the fashion in detectives has since altered considerably. He knew that he could never pose as one of the hatchet - faced, tight - lipped, hawk - eyed lot, while his natural loquaciousness would prevent him from ever being inscrutable. As a result he went perhaps too far to the other extreme and erred on the side of breeziness. In matters of detection Roger Sheringham knows his own limitations. He recognizes that although argument and logical deduction from fact are not beyond him, his faculty for deduction from character is a bigger asset to him; and he knows quite well that he is not infallible. He has, in point of fact, very often been quite wrong. But that never deters him from trying again. For the rest, he has unbounded confidence in himself and is never afraid of taking grave decisions, and often quite illegal ones, when he thinks that pure justice can be served better in this way than by twelve possibly stupid jurymen. Many people like him enormously, and many people are irritated by him beyond endurance; he is quite indifferent to both. Possibly he is a good deal too pleased with himself, but he does not mind that either. Give him his three chief interests in life, and he is perfectly happy - criminology, human nature, and good beer. Views: 20
Dan and Adam have always been close. In fact, they've been closer than Adam could ever guess. And if Dan's going to get that close again, it will take time. It will take research. It may even take practice. Fortunately, Dan is a very patient person – and Adam trusts him. With his house key. With his secrets. With his wife... But as Dan gets closer, someone is watching. Someone who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth... and seek revenge. It's only a matter of time before danger steps out of the shadows. Dan has his sight fixed on the future; perhaps he should have kept one eye on what lay behind? This chilling psychological thriller from the author of Yours is Mine explores love, obsession, and betrayal, and asks: can we ever really know another person? Views: 20
A wildlife biologist's shocking death leads to chilling discoveries about a home for troubled teens in Christine Carbo's haunting and compelling new crime novel set in the wilds of Glacier National Park.Glacier National Park police officer Monty Harris knows that each summer at least one person—be it a reckless, arrogant climber or a distracted hiker—will meet tragedy in the park. But Paul "Wolfie" Sedgewick's fatal fall from the sheer cliffs near Going-To-the-Sun Road is incomprehensible. Wolfie was an experienced and highly regarded wildlife biologist who knew all too well the perils that Glacier's treacherous terrain presents—and how to avoid them. The case, so close to home, has frayed park employee emotions. Yet calm and methodical lead investigator Monty senses in his gut that something isn't right. So when whispers of irresponsibility or suicide emerge, tarnishing Wolfie's reputation, Monty dedicates himself to uncovering the truth, for the... Views: 20
When a teenage boy shoots a young woman dead in the middle of a busy Glasgow street and then commits suicide, Detective Harry McCoy is sure of one thing. It wasn't a random act of violence. With his new partner in tow, McCoy uses his underworld network to lead the investigation but soon runs up against a secret society led by Glasgow's wealthiest family, the Dunlops. McCoy's boss doesn't want him to investigate. The Dunlops seem untouchable. But McCoy has other ideas . . . In a helter-skelter tale - winding from moneyed elite to hipster music groupies to the brutal gangs of the urban wasteland - Bloody January brings to life the dark underbelly of 1970s Glasgow and introduces a dark and electrifying new voice in Scottish noir. Views: 20
