Bag Men: A Novel - Hardcover

Costello, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393039986 ISBN 13: 9780393039986

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997

Synopsis

The authenticity of George V. Higgins and the hipness of Carl Hiassen combine to galvanic effect in this debut police thriller of Boston in the sixties.

The authenticity of George V. Higgins and the hipness of Carl Hiassen combine to galvanic effect in this debut police thriller of Boston in the sixties. An urban police thriller and first novel with a differenceliterary smarts and the real inside skinny on big-city politics and crime fighting. New Year's Day, 1965. The body of Father George Sedgewick is discovered on a snow-covered runway of Logan Airport, brutally murdered. No leads. Missing: four thousand hosts, blessed by the Pope, meant to be given out to the faithful at the first English-language mass in America later that year. Assigned to the case: Ray Dunn, rising young assistant district attorney, son of a corrupt cop. In another part of the city, legendary narcotics detective Manny Manning begins a desperate search for the shadowy source of deadly new heroin hitting the streets. This time Manny is determined to reach the top, but his adversary is cunning, brutaland branching out into a strange new drug called "acid". . . These quests for a killer and a dealer will intersect, unleashing the ghosts of the past and unlocking the secrets of Boston's most powerful institutions. Authentic, knowing, bracingly cynical, Bag Men immediately launches John Flood into the first rank of America's crime writers.

About this title

Review:

This is a hardboiled thriller set in a very particular place and time: Boston, 1965. The complex plot is launched by the discovery of a priest's mutilated corpse on a snowy runway at Logan Airport; meanwhile, a new, potent variety of heroin is killing users in the slums of Boston. These two seemingly unrelated stories quickly begin to intersect and converge, entangling the personal lives of two dedicated but very different investigators. As the search for the ultimate culprit heats up, Flood demonstrates a fine ear for dialog, a strong sense of rhythm, and a convincing feel for the Boston of thirty years ago.

From the Publisher:

"One of the most powerful and impressive pieces of crime fiction in recent memory...a strange, sad, violent odyssey."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Bag Men is terrific. The hard-knocks, hard-boiled world of Boston in 1965 is brilliantly re-created...this book is pure pleasure."
--Scott Turow

"[A] crackerjack crime sizzler...an exhilarating page-turner."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Cinematically sharp sequences, dead-on dialogue, poignant and painful insights, lean prose, vivid imagery, jaw-dropping surprises."
--The Wall Street Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0393039986
• ISBN 13: 9780393039986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256