Exchange Alley - Hardcover

Walsh, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446520691 ISBN 13: 9780446520690

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 1997

Synopsis

An unidentified mutilated body is found in a car with diplomatic plates in the Ramapo Mountains of upstate New York, and NYPD Detective Francis X. Byrne's investigation uncovers a deadly global conspiracy. A first novel.

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Reviews

Densely plotted New York tough-cop procedural that incongruously mixes gruesome walks on the wild side with KGB-CIA intrigue. Beginning initially inside a secret CIA dungeon, this first novel from music journalist Walsh (Andrew Lloyd Webber, not reviewed, etc.) quickly cuts to the discovery of a naked, bullet-ridden, castrated male corpse in the Rockland County woods not far from an abandoned BMW with Danish diplomatic plates registered to a Manhattan address. NYPD Homicide Lieutenant Francis X. Byrne studies the corpse in the gruff and tough style we expect from seen-it-all New York cops until he finds, inside the BMW, a photo of two women, one of whom seems to be Byrne's mother minus 30 or so years. The unsettled Byrne pockets the photo, makes a call on the Danish consulate, and lets Ingrid, who's not afraid to be a sexy Danish clich‚ spy, take him (as a prelude to seduction) through some of Manhattan's more disgusting kinky sex clubs--clubs that were frequented by the murder victim, a Danish consulate employee named Egil Ekdahl, who had his own perverse version of an Oedipus complex. Walsh punctuates numerous in-your-face close-ups of urban debauch with giddy flashbacks that reveal Ekdahl's true identity as a KGB spy who had something to do with a Russian defector who may have been a KGB spy with information about Lee Harvey Oswald and a plot to kill John F. Kennedy. The story falls apart when Byrne's sputtering, mean-spirited brother Tom, an FBI agent, swaggers onto the scene with revelations about Cold War sexual blackmail and the news that nothing is as it seems, including their dear old mom. Byrne is forced to accept the notion that good and evil are relative in more ways the one. Crisply written and thoroughly preposterous mean-streeter. An afterword implies a factual basis to some of the author's fictive imaginings. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Time editor and respected journalist Walsh debuts with an uneven international thriller starring New York cop Francis X. Byrne, Lee Harvey Oswald, a host of Mafia dons, and plenty of Eurotrash. When the sexually molested corpse of a John Doe is discovered in upstate New York in a car with diplomatic plates, it seems the only evidence at the scene is a photograph of Detective Byrne's mother. The victim is Danish cultural attache Egil Ekdahl, a young man who had a penchant for kinky sex. As Byrne finds himself obsessed with stunning Ingrid Bentsen, also of the Danish Consul's office, his brother Tom, an FBI agent, shows up brandishing his own agenda and claiming Ingrid as his fiancee. The Mob, Tom, and a number of factions are after an elusive KGB file on Oswald's stint in the Soviet Union. This novel is raunchy and occasionally rough going, but Byrne is an engaging protagonist, and Walsh shows promise.?Susan A. Zappia, Maricopa Cty. Lib. Dist., Phoenix
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Time music critic Walsh's first novel suggests an enduring fondness for Mad magazine's "Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy." NYPD detective Francis X. Byrne identifies the brutalized body of a young John Doe, found near an abandoned BMW with diplomatic plates, as Danish cultural attacheEgil Ekdahl. But identity is a moving target in this world; soon Byrne must reexamine the identities of victim and suspects, friends and lovers, even his own family. Ekdahl was actually a KGB killer (and a loony one) who became a target for the KGB, the CIA, the FBI (including Byrne's slimeball brother), and the Mafia when he claimed to have the long-missing KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald. Walsh's plot is baroque even by thriller standards; his prose is sometimes overwrought; and the sleazy sex will turn off some readers. Still, the Who killed JFK? question still haunts many Americans, and Walsh's don't-trust-anybody cynicism always finds an audience Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Pub
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446520691
• ISBN 13: 9780446520690
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 391