cover image Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue

Ed Dee. Warner Books, $23 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-446-52038-6

The opening scene of retired NYPD detective Dee's third crime thriller (after Bronx Angel) crackles with authenticity. NYPD detective Anthony Ryan and his partner, Joe Gregory, are chatting about Cookie Counihan, the woman they've come to JFK airport to meet. Their dialogue is counterpointed (in one of Dee's signature stylistic touches) with Ryan's narration, which slowly fills in the reason why the two cops have to speak to Cookie when she steps off her flight from Florida: because Cookie is married to Gregory's first partner, and her son, Johnny Boy, a cargo handler, has just been killed during a robbery when he was mistaken for a policeman. Vengeance comes quickly when Johnny's grandfather shoots up The Cockpit Lounge-owned by the uncrowned king of airport crime, Emil Lutz-in what could be the first move in a gang war involving everyone from Lutz's son (a police informant) to Johnny's Irish girlfriend and a couple of shady Irish hansom cab drivers. There's a hard edge to everything and nearly everyone in this gripping novel, which plays some subtle improvisations on the theme of fathers and sons, and family and its obligations, even as Dee creates a tight mystery that emanates a gritty, world-weary air. The first-person narration turns Ryan into a poet of his personal New York, a city of up-all-night cops who spend more time in bars and cars than outdoors, a town captured by Dee as if he were Hopper, painting it for Police Gazette. Simultaneous Time Warner Audio. (Feb.)