Red on Red

Starred review from February 14, 2011
NYPD detective Conlon, author of the memoir Blue Blood, turns to fiction with this ambitious, sprawling epic of police life. Nick Meehan, a New York City detective slipping into mid-career burnout, takes a special case for Internal Affairs to investigate a suspected dirty cop. Meehan and his new detective partner, Esposito, look into a variety of other cases, including the apparent suicide of a recently arrived Mexican immigrant woman, gangland slayings by rival drug dealers (called "red on red" or criminal on criminal killings), and a serial rapist. In between the crime solving, Conlon examines the personal lives of his two main players, the subtle alliances and loyalties, the emotional tolls, the temptations, the shades of gray inherent to police work. The pace may be slower than the average thriller, but this expertly crafted novel will appeal to readers of literary crime masters such as George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, and Richard Price.

Starred review from February 15, 2011

Nick Meehan is the job, the quintessential New York City PD detective, also one who's ironic and self-contained, intelligent and driven. And troubled.

Meehan and his new partner, the hard-charging Esposito, are dispatched to investigate an apparent suicide in Inwood Hill Park. Meehan has been granted a preferred assignment, but only by accepting a troubling caveat. Meehan is to report on Esposito for the Internal Affairs Bureau. No cop likes a rat, and Meehan doesn't need the IAB's pressure added to worries about a failing marriage and a frail father. At the scene, the detectives confront Ivan Lopez, who reported the body, but his story is shaky, and Meehan is troubled. The next call takes the partners to the scene of a shooting. The victim has been murdered with a shotgun, leading to an incorrect identification. It's not Malcolm Cole, drug dealer and possible killer. It's his brother. Now the detectives are caught between Cole and a Dominican gang with major ambitions. With the pensive and self-aware Meehan doubting his own judgment, Esposito leads the way though a series of maneuvers, some legal, some not, and many skirting department rules, that land the pair in a gun battle at a Dominican gang funeral and then at a clandestine meeting with Cole at which a rogue IAB agent appears. Meanwhile, Ivan Lopez dogs Meehan, wanting help with his teenage daughter, Grace, either the victim of a gang rape or a participant in an orgy. Conlon (Blue Blood, 2004) is a gifted writer, surefooted on this terrain, drawing on personal NYPD experience to immerse the reader in the job, a milieu far more gritty and less glamorous than the car chases that pass for police work on screen. Meehan is a powerful character, realistic in his wry, existentialist approach and deeply sympathetic in his relationship with his wife and with Daysi, a Dominican florist, who may represent a second chance.

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November 1, 2010

NYPD detective Conlon has published in The New Yorker and is author of the best-selling memoir Blue Blood, a National Book Critics Circle finalist. So he can write. This debut novel, which limns the bond between two very different detectives (rough'n'ready vs. slightly mystic), should ring true. With a six-city tour.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2011
Harvard-educated former NYPD officer Conlon wrote about life on the force in his well-received memoir, Blue Blood (2004), the basis for the popular TV show. And, like Joseph Wambaugh, another officer turned fiction writer, Conlon brings his full knowledge of police work to bear in this gritty chronicle of the constant challenges facing Irishman Meehan and his new Latino partner, Esposito, while they work their beat in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. As the duo veer from the scene of a suicide to a mistaken death identification to a gun battle at a gang members funeral to an investigation of a serial rapist, they prove to be complementary, with Meehan taking a measured, more cerebral approach while Esposito charges right in, sometimes skirting departmental regulations to effect the right outcome. Meehan, distracted by his impending divorce and the ill health of his father, must also contend with his own divided loyalties as he confers with the IAB about his new partner, one of the stipulations he agreed to upon taking his new and better job. Conlon captures the herky-jerky nature of a policemans daily routine as it swings between farce and tragedy, all the while detailing the way cops talk, joke, and stress. This realistic take on police work, relayed in cinematic prose, has all the earmarks of a hit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

June 27, 2011
Talk about a policeman's lot not being a happy one. NYPD detective Nick Mehan, the protagonist of NYPD detective Conlon's debut novel, is repressed and depressed and, thanks to his situation, not likely to be in for a mood change. In order to get reassigned to a better precinct, he's agreed to partner with a rule-bending investigator named Esposito and report on his partner's activities to Internal Affairs. That job gets tougher when he develops a close friendship with the charismatic, outgoing Espo. Mark Deakins has a field day defining and contrasting the two men vocally. His Nick speaks softly and thoughtfully, with just a hint of self-pity. Espo is brash and full of bravura, but there's a slightly tinny tone to his overconfidence. There is a lot of plot, not to mention police procedure, in this 17-hour tale, beginning with an apparent suicide and including several shootouts, a gang war, mistaken identity, and the hunt for a serial rapist. Deakins has no trouble keeping up with Conlon's relentless prose and adding another layer to the author's carefully crafted secondary characters, but his most notable achievement is his audio portrayal of the two partners as they push the bonds of friendship to the breaking point. A Spiegel & Grau hardcover.

Starred review from January 1, 2011

NYPD detective Conlon follows up his first-class memoir, Blue Blood, with this superb first novel. Set in upper Manhattan's Dominican-dominated Washington Heights, it is a police procedural with a potent mix of strong story line, police jargon, crisp dialog, black humor, bleakness, gangs, drugs, shootings, murders, and suicide, with complicated romances thrown in. The protagonists are the detective duo of Meehan (Irish American) and Esposito (Latino), who grow closer as they interact with and react to each other during an intensive and widening investigation of a suicide, multiple murders, and an undercover operation to trap a serial rapist. Esposito is drawn to action, exertion, and excitement, while Meehan is more introspective, cerebral, and somber (well-known Irish traits!). Former cop and author Joseph Wambaugh (The Onion Field) has praised this book, and it is easy to see why. The only weakness is Esposito's idealized marital philandering and an unrealistic portrayal of a 13-year-old girl. VERDICT This superb debut novel has all the prerequisites of a best seller. It is authentic, gritty, bleak, fast-paced, and lyrical. [Author tour; library marketing; see Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/10.]--Seamus Scanlon, Ctr. for Worker Education, City Coll. of New York

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.