Rizzo's War

Description

'There's no wrong, there's no right, there just is.' This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long veteran of the NYPD, as he passes on the knowledge of his years of experience to his ambitious new partner, Mike McQueen, over a year of riding together as detectives in the Sixty-second Precinct in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. McQueen is fresh from the beat in Manhattan, and Bensonhurst might well be China for how different it is. They work on several cases, some big, some small, but the lesson is always the same. Whether it's a simple robbery or an attempted assault, Rizzo's saying always seems to bear out. When the two detectives are given the delicate task of finding and returning the runaway daughter of a city councilman, who may or may not be interested in something his daughter has taken with her than in her safety, the situation is much more complex. By the end of Rizzo and McQueen's year together, however, McQueen is not surprised to discover that even in those more complicated cases, Rizzo is still right - there's no wrong, there's no right, there just is.

Lou Manfredo served in the Brooklyn criminal justice system for twenty-five years. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Brooklyn Noir. This is his first novel. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife.

As a depiction of the Byzantine, politicized existence of a working American police department, Rizzo's War stands as a valuable primer. * David Simon, creator of The Wire * As stark and true as David Simon's faultless depiction of the Baltimore PD in The Wire... * Daily Mail * Brooklyn, as the portrayal in Manfredo's excellent debut makes clear, is a different world. Rizzo's War is a police procedural of more than usual intelligence. * The Times * Riveting... dealing with every aspect of American policing from dirty politics to the intricate hierarchy of biker gangs. * Guardian * Rizzo's War is exceptional. Most urban crime novels do not tell it like it is. But this is a bold adventure... a terrific debut and Lou Manfredo is a writer to watch. * Peter Blauner *