cover image The Hero of New York

The Hero of New York

T. Glen Coughlin. W. W. Norton & Company, $14.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-393-02262-9

New York City police detective Bill Patterson is a 21-year veteran of the force (and a one-time recipient of a Hero of the Year award) when he is suspended from his job pending an investigation into charges that he assaulted a Jewish assemblyman during a Hasidic protest outside his precinct office. The assemblyman himself is also charged with assault, and while Patterson awaits the outcome of his purgatorial plight, he drinks himself into a heart attack. Patterson's 19-year-old son Charlie narrates the story as he tries to come to terms with the violent nature of his father's joband with his father. At the same time, he must decide whether to drop out of school, what to do with his life, and how to win back his girlfriend. Coughlin's first novel is an affable, affecting portrait of a policeman's family under pressure. The family steals the novel from the policeman, however, rendering somewhat ineffective Coughlin's initial focus on the doughty cop. Foreign rights: Sanford Greenburger. February 24