New York, 1973. Tommy Kelly is released from prison. Young, charming, damaged and restless, he has his whole life ahead of him. Yet Tommy only knows one kind of life.
Rejoined with his childhood sweetheart, Catherine, he starts working for her uncle, the Hell’s Kitchen crime boss, King Billy Flynn. Billy’s world is brutal, and Tommy settles in. But when he keeps crossing paths with John Savarese, the ADA who first locked him up and now doesn’t even recognize him, Tommy acts on a plan to establish independence, a desperate plan that goes terribly wrong and sends the whole lot careening toward an explosive ending.
Through its vivid characters and riveting prose we are made companion and captive to this unrelenting tale. Lee’s writing is so absorbing and original, so full of insight into the criminal mind, we are alarmed to find that in a race to pursue the book’s end we too have been led into the darkness.
Rejoined with his childhood sweetheart, Catherine, he starts working for her uncle, the Hell’s Kitchen crime boss, King Billy Flynn. Billy’s world is brutal, and Tommy settles in. But when he keeps crossing paths with John Savarese, the ADA who first locked him up and now doesn’t even recognize him, Tommy acts on a plan to establish independence, a desperate plan that goes terribly wrong and sends the whole lot careening toward an explosive ending.
Through its vivid characters and riveting prose we are made companion and captive to this unrelenting tale. Lee’s writing is so absorbing and original, so full of insight into the criminal mind, we are alarmed to find that in a race to pursue the book’s end we too have been led into the darkness.
