Project Named Des

A constant undercurrent of violence runs through this gritty police story by the authors of So Small a Carnival. Ralph ""Rat'' Trapp, black captain of homicide in the New Orleans police department, tries to find the murderer of a key witness against Franco Burnucci, Mafia drug czar and link him with the attempted murder of Danny Bynum, rock superstar and highly effective crusader against drug abuse. Rat has earned a reputation as a brutal, nasty, hard-nosed cop with little regard for the Miranda rulinga reputation he clearly cherishesand it is his cool and assured voice that narrates the bloody sequence of events. His investigations lead him back to his roots, a squalid, crime-infested ghetto called the Desire Project, and back to his childhood sweetheart, Camille Bynum, Danny's mother, who fled the project 20 years earlier by running off with Nick Burnucci, Franco's son. With the aid of an aggressive reporter, Wes Colvin, Rat battles corrupt cops and an inept bureaucracy to peel away the layers of deception and find who is ordering the murders and the subsequent coverups. The Corringtons' novel seethes with energy and is laced with a hard-edged humor; the seamy, smouldering city of New Orleans pulses with life. (January)