(from back cover):" William J. Caunitz gives us the authentic stink and hustle of precinct polic work in New York City, the politics, the stress, and a glimpse at that mysterious quality that keeps a good cop dedicated". (John D. MacDonald)
On a quiet, early June morning an old man sits in a park in Brooklyn feeding the pigeons. Then he walks over to a candy store, pulls a shotgun out of a grubby shopping bag, and blasts the owner and a customer into eternity. Lt. Anthony Scanlon, a commander of a local precinct's detective squad is incensed by this crime. The customer who was so brutally murdered was a fellow police officer, a man to whom Scanlon owes his still being "on the job," as cops describe their dangerous line of work. Scanlon can find no motive, no indication as to why someone would want ti kill either the police officer or Yetta Zimmerman, a beloved neighborhood figure. But answers pop up when Scanlon is cleaning out the officer's locker at the station house. He finds things that will lead him into a world inside his own department, a world in which the very few but sacred unwritten rules of cops have been broken. There will be more murders before the case is solved. Scanlon becomes immersed in the highest and lowest levels of the nightmare universe that cops and criminals cohabit.
The author writes in such a compelling manner because he himself was a New York Cit police officer for 30 years.
The author writes in such a compelling manner because he himself was a New York Cit police officer for 30 years.
A good read.
Life inside the urban Police Force.Marvelous cast of characters!
It starts out slow, but half way through it starts getting better.
