09/06/2021
In this uneven crime novel from Reuland (Semiautomatic), Will Way, a jaded Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association union official, gets caught in a political firestorm after a rookie cop shoots and kills a Black teenager on a Brooklyn street corner. A gun is found underneath the body, but as Way investigates, he uncovers the truth—it was planted there to clear the officer involved in the shooting. The case quickly becomes a feeding frenzy for the media, and when Way’s murky connection with a prominent Brooklyn supreme court judge is exposed, he becomes the next target for a mob looking for someone to blame for the racial and socioeconomic injustice in America. Though the raw social commentary is as powerful as brass knuckles to the skull and the gritty existentialism palpable (“I always believed rolling in the dogshit of the world had made me wiser in compensation, but possibly all it did was make me stink”), Way comes across as a hard-boiled cliché—an emotionally damaged cop readers have seen innumerable times before. Assured prose and a strong ending suggest Reuland can do better next time. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffmann & Assoc. (Nov.)