Bag Men — Mark Costello

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.