Returning to the mean streets of South Boston, Marinick’s taut, hard-hitting second novel (after 2004’s Boyos
)
is the literary equivalent of getting assaulted by a gang of psychotic street thugs. Delray McCauley, a former Massachusetts state trooper, has just finished a three-year prison stint after being wrongly convicted of beating up an undercover DEA agent. Now working as a bartender in the area where he was born and raised, McCauley is equally hated by his former law enforcement comrades and by the local Southie boyos. So when he decides to help out an old friend in the Boston police department with a highly sensitive case involving a stolen safe from a prominent lawyer’s office, he unwittingly makes himself the prime target for a chilling assemblage of sadistic hit men and cop-hating gangsters. While the gritty authenticity of South Boston’s criminal underworld is an obvious highlight, it’s the spot-on characterization and dialogue as well as the subtle existentialist theme that distinguish this bloody neo-noir thriller. Fans of authors like Ken Bruen, Jason Starr and Charlie Huston are in for a treat
. (Dec.)
