The Disposables

Putnam’s first novel, a fast-paced tale of idealism and corruption, stars paroled ex-con Bruno Johnson, once a legendary member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s elite Violent Crimes Team, who fears that it’s only a matter of time before his former colleagues turn on him. Desperate for a nest egg large enough to allow him to disappear with lover Marie and the abused kids they’ve rescued, Bruno agrees to do one final big job. Meanwhile, his former partner, Robby Wicks, to whom Bruno owes a favor, asks him for assistance in solving a brutal series of murders, perhaps the work of a single madman or evidence of something much darker. The author relies on iconic figures—endangered children, sympathetic hookers with a weakness for broken cops, amoral lowlifes with and without badges—rather than more complex characters, but he wields his archetypes with skill and a sincerity born of long experience in law enforcement. Agents: Mike and Susan Farris, Farris Literary Agency. (May)