BLOOD ALLEY
by Tom Coffey
A daughter of the very rich is found dead among the very poor, and suddenly a young reporter has a mission.
Patrick Grimes works for The New York Examiner, the second best-read scandal sheet in post-World War II New York City. That is, he’d like to think of himself as working for the paper. At the moment, he’s only a probationer on the rewrite desk, living in hope. So when circumstances compel Editor McCracken to dispatch the 23-year-old WWII veteran to a crime scene, he smells opportunity in the brutal murder of Amanda Price, older daughter of Harrington Price, one of the city’s wealthiest, most powerful men. What was Amanda doing in Blood Alley, the name given to a particularly poverty-stricken, vice-ridden, violent composite of urban ugliness? Nobody but Grimes seems to care—not the steely-eyed, granite-hearted Price, nor his willful, Circe-like younger daughter, nor anyone in the NYPD. Blatantly racist cops have arrested William Anderson, the friendless black night watchman, and beaten out of him a confession Grimes knows is bogus. To prove it, he sets to work, experiences an epiphany and comes to a grave conclusion.
A complex, often gripping crime story that should come with a warning. What Coffey (Miami Twilight, 2001, etc.) sees through his glass isn’t just dark, it’s stygian.