A hard-nosed cop tears into the criminal shadow world of the Lower East SideOn the streets of downtown Manhattan, there is no better disguise than the vacant stare and limp slouch of the junkie. Masquerading as an addict, Johnny Katanos goes undetected as he slithers up the fire escape towards the biggest heroin operation in the city of New York. He disables the alarms, distracts the guards, kills the Dobermans, and is waiting with a grenade when Ronald Jefferson Chadwick, drug kingpin, returns with a suitcase full of cash. A few minutes later, the money is gone, Chadwick is dead, and the factory has been reduced to a fireball. Though the New York Police Department rarely investigates a dealer's death, a Russian-made grenade appearing downtown is cause for fear. The case falls to Stanley Moodrow, a beefy detective who knows that in an investigation like this, there's no time to go by the book.

To keep his practice alive, a desperate lawyer takes a case defending a battered wifeJust seven years after he left law school, Sid Kaplan was one of New York's top defense attorneys. With a glittering style and a hunger for competition, he was as fierce as they come. He was the go-to lawyer for Manhattan's toughest, flashiest criminals—until his mother's death wrecked his confidence. Suddenly, the only way to sustain his sixteen-hour days was a ceaseless stream of cocaine and scotch, a combination that ruined his life's work in a matter of months. His only remaining employees are Caleb and Julia—a pair of ex-clients who don't mind working for irregular pay. Sid's latest bum case is Priscilla Sweet, a drug addict with priors, violent tendencies, and a dead husband whom she may or may not have killed in self-defense. She also has dangerous friends, which means that defending Prissy will make Sid famous again—either on the front page, or in the obituaries.

The murder of a police officer reveals a world of corruption in this contemporary noir thriller set in New York. When Detective Boots Littlewood’s regular bookie, Drago, reveals that the shooting of police officer Captain Christopher Palmer was no random killing but an organized hit in exchange for a lighter sentence, Boots is assigned to a task force to investigate with a new partner, Jill Kelly, and soon uncovers a trail of corruption that someone will do anything to protect . . .Review“An accomplished hard-boiled crime”Booklist “Solomita seasons his tale with grit and gristle. . . dark, satisfying crime novel.”Publishers Weekly  About the AuthorStephen Solomita is the author of several critically acclaimed thrillers, including "Damaged Goods About the ReaderJason Culp has been featured on the soap operas "General Hospital, "Days of Our Lives, and "Another World, and appeared in the film "Skinheads.

Now a PI, Moodrow takes on a pair of crooked real estate developers in QueensJackson Heights is a quiet neighborhood made up of immigrants, families, and young professionals looking to escape sky-high Manhattan rents. For Marek Najowski, the neighborhood is an easy target. A slumlord with dreams of becoming a player, he teams up with Irish drug kingpin Marty Blanks to buy three sleepy apartment buildings and, using intimidation and violence, drive out the rent-controlled tenants. The potential profits are limitless. But they haven't counted on Stanley Moodrow. Once the toughest cop in the New York Police Department, Moodrow has not mellowed since he took his business private. When he gets a whiff of the Jackson Heights scheme, he sees an opportunity to showcase his particular talents. As Marek and Marty will learn, criminals aren't the only ones who know how to hurt people.

A repeat offender freshly sprung from prison tries to do the impossible: Stay out troublePeter Frangello hasn’t spent three straight years out of jail since he was sixteen. Now past thirty, he’s nearing parole when his prison block neighbor is burned alive in his cell, a vicious attack that was intended for Frangello himself. He spends his last week in protective custody, and when he is released back into the world he makes a resolution to stay clean—not for morality’s sake, but because if he goes back inside, the next hit won’t miss. But for a man whose only skills are stealing and doing time, staying out of trouble is not easy. As old associates and an army of crooked cops put pressure on him, Frangello will find that, inside or out, he’s doomed to remain a prisoner for life.

A young and ambitious New York gangster; two dedicated New York detectives. The city just isn't big enough for them all . . .Teddy Winuk has it all going on. He's young, ambitious, dedicated, ruthless and blessed with enough energy to fuel a crew twice the size of the one he's assembled. Teddy has a game plan, too, a marketing strategy worthy of the financier he once aspired to be. New York City is home to more than three million immigrants from all over the world. Naturally, a small percentage is in need of the drugs and the loans he's prepared to supply. All he needs to do is reach out to them through a network of junior partners drawn from those very communities.Yes, Teddy Winuk is on his way up, yet like all entrepreneurs, there are hurdles to overcome. Two especially, in Teddy's case. First, the John Pianetta crime family and the tax they impose on the profits of ambitious criminals like Teddy. Second, a pair of New York detectives named Boots Littlewood...

A contemporary New York noir coming-of-age story - Nineteen-year-old Hootie has been in trouble all his life. An outsider, his father was Crow Indian; his mother is black; but Hootie is neither black, nor white, nor Latino, nor Asian. When he meets Bubba Yablonsky, the biggest white man hes ever seen, at a subway station in Harlem, he knows somethings up. Then Bubba opens fire at an innocent rat before offering Hootie money and a place to live. But whats the catch? And what else who else has Bubba shot?

A mysterious cult is pushing a designer drug, and only Moodrow can shut the deadly organization downThough they preach love and understanding, the people of Hanover House also know a thing or two about strong-arm tactics. When an errant member of the Canal Street cult plans to write a tell-all book exposing Davis Craddock's pseudo-religion as a sham, the Hanoverians react calmly. One of the cult's members, Flo Alamare, is dispatched to let the would-be author know that he's welcome to write whatever he likes—so long as he doesn't care whether his daughter lives or dies. Soon Flo is found dumped in an empty lot in the Bronx. She's barely alive, having apparently suffered a stroke or seizure—and the doctors don't realize that she overdosed on a powerful drug of Craddock's own design. She's returned to her parents, who had been desperately searching for her. The tough-minded Alamares want revenge, and hire bruising PI Stanley Moodrow to catch Craddock and break his...

A broke PI attempts to prove the innocence of a wrongly convicted homeless manLate at night by posh Gramercy Park, a woman peers into the backseat of a parked car. She's never seen a dead body before, but there's enough blood that she has no doubt what she's looking at. She remembers seeing a strange man nearby, and the police use her fuzzy identification and a few other bits of tenuous evidence to finger Billy Sowell, an alcoholic bum with limited intelligence and a patchy memory, as the killer. Who cares if he's guilty? Billy's an easy conviction, and his case is forgotten until years later, when it falls in the lap of PI Marty Blake. Blake will take anything as he tries to rebuild his practice after a year's suspension for illegal surveillance, and he attempts to clear Billy's name using his expertise at computerized investigation. But when it comes to proving the New York Police Department wrong, virtual sleuthing will not be enough. For this computer expert, it's time to...

A mercenary turned hitman. An aging gangster with arthritic knees. A bent cop playing more angles than a Brooklyn pool shark. Which of these men is the hunter? Which the hunted? And who's just the monkey in the middle?

A frantic mother races to rescue her child from a brain-damaged killer in this sixth Stanley Moodrow crime novel. "Solomita has Elmore Leonard's flair for letting you view the world through his character's eyes, no matter how narrow or how bloodshot".--The New York Times Book Review.From Publishers WeeklyMountainous Stanley Moodrow, hero of five N.Y.C. crime thrillers (A Piece of the Action, etc.), makes a welcome return?as does Solomita's gritty sensibility, missing from his recent, and weaker, non-Moodrow novels (Last Chance for Glory, etc.). Both the series and ex-cop Moodrow (turning 60 and recovering from a prostate infection) make concessions to age here. Moodrow takes on a partner, young Guinevere Gadd, whose computer skills complement his street smarts. Pitted against the pair is a typically ferocious Solomita villain: crazed killer Jilly Sappone, a minor mafioso who, upon his unexpected release from prison, kidnaps his four-year-old daughter in order to avenge himself against his estranged wife. Hired to find the little girl, Moodrow and Gadd fail tragically, pushing them onto their own path of vengeance?against not only Sappone but also the feds who sprang him to further another case. The action here is fast and gives rise to a piercing urban melancholy. Solomita's characters seem etched in silverpoint as he once again peers into dark corners of both the city and the soul. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalJilly Sappone truly is "damaged goods." The gunshot that wrecked his brain years before also made him into a vicious killer. Released from prison by family connections, he takes revenge on everyone responsible for his prison term. Beginning with his ex-wife, Ann, Jilly and his brainless psychotic partner, Jackson-Davis, commence a spree of kidnapping and violent murders. Ex-cop Stanley Moodrow, featured in Solomita's A Twist of the Knife (Putnam, 1988), is hired, as is detective cum-computer-whiz Ginny Gadd, to track down Jilly. The trail to Jilly's eventual capture is a convincing albeit violent one, since ex-taxi driver Solomita (Last Chance for Glory, LJ 6/15/94) is a master at capturing on paper the flavor of streetwise cops and robbers and their victims. His characters are rarely classy but real, like Moodrow, a "dinosaur" up against today's high-tech society, who indeed does get his man, despite his old-fashioned ways. A nice buy for Solomita fans.?Alice DiNizo, Raritan P.L., N.J.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New York City police officer Stanley Moodrow investigates a case that his superiors do not want solved, and his questions lead him to discover devastating secrets lurking in the shadows of the city. Reprint. PW. K. From Publishers WeeklyThe author of A Twist of the Knife and three other suspense novels starring New York City police detective Stanley Moodrow, Solomita here goes back in time, weaving a satisfying, fast-paced tale of his character's first years on the force. It's 1957, and after winning a boxing match at which he represents the police department, beat cop Moodrow is rewarded with a promotion to the rank of detective. His "rabbi," or mentor, is inspector Pat Cohan, a proud Irish cop who has been on the take for years--a fact Moodrow is unaware of. Cohan allows Moodrow to court his daughter, Kathleen, and the young cop couldn't be happier--until a neighbor asks him to inquire about a homicide that the police don't seem interested in solving. Moodrow soon learns that higher-ups in the department have indeed quashed the investigation, and in his bullheaded way he pursues the few leads on his own, even though airing the complete story will tear his cozy world apart. Solomita offers a well-plotted narrative and nicely evokes New York City a generation ago. This is hard-boiled police fiction at its best. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalFifth in the acclaimed Stanley Moodrow procedurals, this title relives Moodrow's early days as an up-and-coming beat cop in 1958 New York.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A psychopath is loose in Brooklyn, and it will take a half-mad cop to catch him. A gang of small-time dealers camps out underneath the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge, slipping hits to passing addicts in exchange for ten bucks a pop. It's blistering hot, and they drink beer to stay cool, sharing a six-pack with a couple of local girls. As the night winds down, a massive black man appears in a coat that's too heavy for the weather, produces a shotgun, and starts to fire. Among the dead are two supposed customers—an undercover cop and a reporter whom the city will avenge by opening a new front in the war on drugs. The gunman, a full-time crack addict with a boxer's build and a bulldog's temper, disappears into the wilds of Brooklyn. To roust him, Stanley Moodrow will rain hell on the borough, breaking in a new partner as he attempts to smoke out the wild man with a shotgun.

An exciting contemporary hard-boiled thriller set in New York - Angel Tamanaka is a beautiful young prostitute working for an escort agency in Manhattan. Leonard Carter is ex Special Forces and has been living off the grid ever since he returned from overseas to work as a hit man. Their two worlds collide when Angel witnesses Leonard executing one of her clients, a high-profile gangster, and they form an unusual alliance. For Angel's client spoke to her of a cache of money before he died . . . but can they get to it before the gang tracks them down?