The Honor Farm: Where Bad Cops Kill Time . . .

A lifetime - nineteen and a half years - of patrolling suburban Long Island without promotion has left Officer Orin Boyd one option: hang loose, stay out of trouble, and collect his pension in six months. Pure instinct makes him go after the two tuxedos harassing a well-dressed black woman along Manhasset's Miracle Mile. But his instincts are too rough, and the heads he cracks belong to New York State Senator Thomas Cotton and his top aide.
Now Cotton's got a grudge, and Police Commissioner David Trimble's got what he's been looking for: the perfect mole. To placate Cotton, he'll get Boyd sentenced to the Honor Farm, a Gold Coast mansion converted into a prison for dirty cops. No one but Trimble will know that Boyd's really working undercover, investigating the recent alleged suicide of Trimble's son, Skip, one day before his scheduled release from the Farm. An ex-Marine and ex-drunk with some pretty colorful mistakes in his past, Boyd fits right in with the rogues on the Farm. His old pal George Clarke, doing time for bigamy, is delighted to see him; Dominick Ril, who lost his freedom and his bankroll in Boyd's celebrated Belmont sting, would love to put a bullet in him. And Nick Morelli, former PBA president with a raging lust for women and power, has secret orders direct from Senator Cotton to make Boyd suffer - big-time.
But the next cop to die is poor, universally shunned Dick Pettibone - another apparent suicide. While the press and politicians push for shutting the Farm down Boyd's busy taunting the neurotic new warden, planting bugs, and thwarting a much too carefully planned beating. Then outside murders threaten his cover - and unknown enemies stalk his wife and daughter. Now it's time to bust loose and hit back with some juice of his own...

On Long Island, Vietnam vet and Nassau County cop Orin Boyd (returning from Exit Wounds) is still only a uniformed cop, largely because of his frank contempt for authority. Breaking up an apparent assault, Boyd knocks around crooked right-wing State Senator Tommy Cotton (aka "Senator Sewer"). Cotton wants Boyd's head. But Police Commissioner David Trimble has a plan of his own: in exchange for Boyd copping a plea for assault, thus satisfying Cotton, and doing six months in the county's "country club" jail, he'll grant Boyd a gold shield?on the further condition that, while in jail, Boyd investigate the death of Trimble's son, who allegedly hanged himself with one day left in an 18-month sentence. Shortly after Boyd's arrival at the "farm," there's another "suicide" and the surfacing of many motley suspects. The top con there, an ex-PBA leader looking for Boyd's legendary stash of ill-gotten money, begins a computer campaign to dry up Boyd's bank accounts and to frame his wife for embezzlement. Boyd's boat is sunk, his house is torched and his wife and little daughter are stalked by a hit man. Westermann, who worked 20 years as a Long Island cop, brings plenty of colorful detail to the novel and to Boyd, who's smart, funny and not above taking the law into his own hands. The pacing is relentless, and the uncovering of secrets old and new will keep readers glued as they're plunged into a Long Island that's way beyond Levittown.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A whodunit with a twist--instead of going undercover on the mean streets and leafy suburban lanes of New York's Nassau County (as he did in Exit Wounds, 1990), Patrol Officer Orin Boyd goes to jail to learn whether the prison-cell death of Police Commissioner David Trimble's son was a suicide or murder. And what a jail it is. Nicknamed the Honor Farm, the Nassau Country Correctional Facility at Sands Point is a former Gold Coast mansion that provides cushy containment for convicted police. With the exception of occasional shifts in the prison's slaughterhouse and a rare round of janitorial chores, the Honor Farm offers an almost comical regimen of nonstop rest and recreation for 20 crooked cops, many of whom know (and hate) Orin Boyd. And now is their chance to do something about it. As soon as the gates squeak shut on Boyd, who's agreed to be arrested and sent there as a cover for his investigation, his family finances are wiped out by a computer-hacking con who's chummy with some cops whom Boyd once arrested. Tommy Cotton, a corrupt senator Boyd humiliated during a traffic stop, tries to have Boyd beaten up. A creepy con named Harmless George goes after Boyd's wife, June, and another group of cons secretly launches a scam to buy the Farm. After one more apparent suicide, it's difficult to tell the schemers from the scammed as Boyd, a proud Vietnam vet blessed with equal helpings of brains and brawn, takes on all comers, uncovering a sad truth about crooked cops and the people who bend them to their will. A wry, street-smart, bare-knuckles, behind-bars brawl that bears up under a thick plot and a large cast of dirty denizens. Fans of the police procedurals of early Wambaugh and late McBain will delight in the gruff sensibilities of Westermann's heroes and the unregenerate sleaziness of his villains. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Westermann's protagonist, Long Island cop Orin Boyd, is a likable maniac. Nearing retirement, he has managed to never get promoted in a police force where virtually everyone is in charge of something. When Orin punches out a crooked state senator he finds assaulting a woman, the police commissioner has the tool he needs to investigate the Island's country-clubbish prison for bent cops. The commish's son, it seems, has died there, officially a suicide, just days before his scheduled release, and Orin becomes the Honor Farm's newest inmate. Orin, of course, has lots of enemies both on the farm and off, and before his undercover work is over, he is comparing his assignment to his Marine Corps stint at besieged Khe Sanh. Westermann is a talented storyteller. Perhaps more important, he's a real cop, and his mix of mordant humor, twisted cops, and Byzantine Long Island politics sounds like it could have come from the pages of Newsday as easily as from his imagination. The Honor Farm is a winner, and cop novel fans need to put Westermann's books on their required reading list. Thomas Gaughan

After unwittingly assaulting a sleazebag senator, policeman Orin Boyd from Exit Wounds (Soho, 1990) receives a six-month sentence in a luxurious Long Island prison for cops gone wrong, where he investigates the supposed suicide of the police commissioner's only son. Another suicide, punitive manipulations by the senator's minions, attempts to steal loot scammed by Boyd years before, and threats to his family add to the suspense. Police procedural fans will like Westermann's forceful prose, natural wit, and constant action.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.