"Brutally realistic . . . The authors give us one last, lingering look at the good-bad old days."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
"There is a classic noir sensibility at work in Serpents in the Cold, complete with its uncannily rendered sense of time and place, but the novel is also suffused with a thoroughly modern understanding of loss, pain, damage and the price of loyalty. It's not often you get to pair gritty with lyrical, but you certainly do here."—Alan Glynn, author of Limitless
"[O'Malley and Purdy] excel at the language of their characters. . . . Nothing is innocent, and nobody is what he or she seems."—Clea Simon, Boston Globe
"In the best noir tradition, these co-authors shine a smoky light on lives often lived in the shadows; in this case, the inhabitants who lived in Scollay Square and the West End of Boston, before it all disappeared under the developers' wrecking ball."—WBUR
"This is a bone-crunching, gut-wrenching novel that captures the atmosphere of a city in decay and its inhabitants. It delivers noir fiction like we always want it to be."—Kirkus Reviews
"Serpents in the Cold is a great addition to the canon of gritty Boston street fiction, a no-punches-pulled look at a bygone era. Noir is how we like our crime, and "no-'R'" is how we pronounce it."—Chuck Hogan, author of The Town
11/03/2014
O’Malley (This Magnificent Desolation) teams with debut novelist Purdy on this gritty mystery set in early 1950s Boston. Dante Cooper, a recent widower battling a heroin addiction, suffers another emotional blow when he learns that his sister-in-law, Sheila Anderson, has been murdered. Her naked body was left overnight on Tenean Beach in Dorchester, where she lived. Sheila appears to be the latest victim of a serial killer known as the Butcher. With the help of his friend Cal O’Brien, a former cop who has recurring nightmares from his tour of duty in WWII, the single-minded Dante scours Boston, from the seedy Boston Common to the shady South End, in search of clues. O’Malley and Purdy bring postwar Boston to life, making neighborhoods feel as distinct as separate countries. While the authors don’t offer much suspense, they have delivered a love-letter to a Boston that’s long gone. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (Jan.)
In 1951, Boston is suffering a winter so cold that the frozen body of a murdered woman won’t be buried until spring. Narrator Jim Frangione has listeners buckle their seat belts as he drives a shadowy route with Dante Cooper, an ex-heroin addict, and his ex-cop friend, Cal O’Brien, who independently set out to solve the murder of Dante’s sister-in-law. This turns out to be unpopular as it brings to light the involvement of the Church, Irish mobsters, and crooked politicians. Frangione’s dynamic performance illuminates the dark underbelly of Boston as he delivers a mystery packed with gangsters, loan sharks, drug dealers, crooked cops, and a psychopath known as the Butcher. Frangione’s ability to transition effortlessly between colorful characters with various Boston accents highlights their temperaments and classes, making this post-WWII era sound authentic. As narrator, Frangione never loses the listener in the violent exploits of the perilous journey. B.J.P. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
In 1951, Boston is suffering a winter so cold that the frozen body of a murdered woman won’t be buried until spring. Narrator Jim Frangione has listeners buckle their seat belts as he drives a shadowy route with Dante Cooper, an ex-heroin addict, and his ex-cop friend, Cal O’Brien, who independently set out to solve the murder of Dante’s sister-in-law. This turns out to be unpopular as it brings to light the involvement of the Church, Irish mobsters, and crooked politicians. Frangione’s dynamic performance illuminates the dark underbelly of Boston as he delivers a mystery packed with gangsters, loan sharks, drug dealers, crooked cops, and a psychopath known as the Butcher. Frangione’s ability to transition effortlessly between colorful characters with various Boston accents highlights their temperaments and classes, making this post-WWII era sound authentic. As narrator, Frangione never loses the listener in the violent exploits of the perilous journey. B.J.P. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
2014-11-05
A dark thriller in which two misfits take on the corrupt Boston political system with revenge as their mantra.Boston, 1951: a ready-built noir setting. It's gray and winter-cold, and men spend their time in grimy bars where drugs and violence rule. O'Malley and Purdy write cinematically, building the bleakness of the city and its denizens around Scollay Square into the fabric of the fiction, with the city itself becoming a primary character. "The radiators pinged and rattled, and the lower sections of the windows that looked out on the avenue were filmed with steam. From the windows they could see the vacant expanse that Scollay Square was becoming." Cal O'Brien and Dante Cooper are childhood friends, each with his own poisonous issues. Cal has returned from World War II France with a limp and a drinking problem, killing the pain and the recurring dreams of death with booze. Dante is a junkie, spun out of control after he watched his wife overdose. Secrets and broken people populate these winter streets. Dante's sister-in-law, Sheila, is found brutally murdered, assumed to be another victim of the Butcher who's been stalking women in Boston and torturing them in an abandoned trailer. But when Dante and Cal take on the task of hunting the killer as a family matter, the facts veer abruptly to big money and an old neighborhood pal now running for Senate. Congressman and candidate Michael Foley had an affair with Sheila, and his brother Blackie, a punk gangster in the old neighborhood, cleans up the messes Michael makes along the path to election. When Blackie goes too far and murders Cal's wife because he's getting close to the truth, the hunt for a killer becomes all-out war. This is a bone-crunching, gut-wrenching novel that captures the atmosphere of a city in decay and its inhabitants. It delivers noir fiction like we always want it to be.
