City of Margins

Set in South Brooklyn in the early 1990s, this outstanding novel from Boyle (A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself) focuses on a group of people whose lives seem fated to collide with often tragic consequences. Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop, now works as an enforcer for a local mobster, Big Time Tommy Ficalora. Widow Rosemarie Baldini struggles to repay a gambling debt that her late husband owed to Ficalora. Rosemarie’s son, Mikey, has dropped out of college and is back in the neighborhood, possibly destined for the kind of strong arm work that got his father murdered. A disturbing note leads Mikey to Donna Rotante, Donnie’s ex-wife, who lives a quiet monastic life with her turntable and records following the suicide of her teenage son. Revenge and retribution follow. Battered by loss and unrealized dreams, Boyle’s characters are vividly drawn and painfully real. Fans of literary crime novelists such as George Pelecanos and Richard Price will be highly rewarded. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (Mar.)