Snitch

As a former NYPD detective, Leuci (Fence Jumpers; The Prince of the City) has an insider's feel for police behavior. Here, he presents a soulful, intimate story of relationships between partners as they struggle to track down Latin American criminals in New York. It's 1979, and Nick Manaris and Sonny McCabe are detectives first-grade working a complicated arms case in Jackson Heights, Queens. They're hardly an ideal match: Manaris is a conscientious 10-year cop who deplores dishonesty and sloppy police work, while McCabe is a fame-seeking loose cannon who could charm the leg off a chair. McCabe has a ""snitch"" who gives the Queens DA a promising case against the owner of a Cuban nightclub, vengefully naming his wife's lover, Diego Cienfuego, as the Cuban arms syndicate's ""main guy."" A raid on the club results in the deaths of two cops and five civilians; the innocent Cienfuego, who works at the club, is later murdered in jail. Manaris suspects that McCabe killed Cienfuego's teenage son in cold blood during the debacle at the club; but McCabe insists the boy had a gun. After 11 years, McCabe retires from police work to write procedurals, while Manaris devotes himself to fishing and solitude. When he meets and falls in love with a young woman called Laura Diaz, Manaris doesn't question who she is or why she wants him-but her reasons reach back to the old nightclub shootings and her desire to get to McCabe. By the novel's end, the scales fall from Manaris's eyes, providing a rare glimpse of the scarred interior landscape many cops inhabit. (Mar.)