Patti Black is the most decorated cop in Chicago; a ghetto street officer, she redefines the word badass. But the steel-plated exterior she shows to the world - solitary, friendless, loveless - hides the hideous traumas of her past. As an orphaned child, she was horribly sexually abused by her foster parents, and the torments of the past are only barely contained by her meticulously maintained tough-guy persona. When a serious of seemingly unrelated cases - a drug bust gone bad, a mayoral assassination attempt, the abduction and murder of a state attorney, a long-hidden body walled up in a tenement basement - all point in her direction, she comes to the horrified realization that her past is no longer staying in its deeply suppressed place. It's back and hunting her down...**From Publishers WeeklyConfrontational and uncompromising Patti Black, Chicago's most decorated cop, gets caught in a web of murder and betrayal in Newton's searing debut. When several unrelated cases threaten to reveal her horrific childhood as an abused runaway and teenage rape victim, Patti defies everybody to find Roland Ganz, her bête noir, who she suspects is behind the crimes; she must also locate the son she put up for adoption whom she thinks Roland is seeking. Accompanied by her sometime friend and rugby teammate, newspaper reporter Tracy Moens, she frantically follows a trail from Chicago to nearby Calumet City, the Arizona desert and back. The surprise ending includes a search on a houseboat moored on Lake Michigan during a tornado as well as a shootout in the depths of a disintegrating slum building. Newton, who based his heroine's character on a real Chicago police officer, creates a netherworld full of violent and duplicitous people. Pacing is all but absent amid the unrelenting action of the repetitive narrative. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review"A terrific modern noir on a raw Chicago cityscape harboring too many untold stories. If you try to set it down, this book will kick you in the teeth." -- Kevin Guilfoile, author of the Chicago Tribune bestseller Cast of Shadows "A powerhouse debut. Packed with nonstop action and searing emotion, written in blistering prose, Calumet City marks Charlie Newton as a new force in suspense fiction." -- Jeff Abbott, author of Fear and Panic "The best cop noir in years." -- Lee Child, author of Bad Luck and Trouble "...those who relish tortured heroines, unrelenting intensity, and full-throttle races will snatch this one up." -Booklist, starred review "Newton's absorbing debut novel...A galloping ride from first page to last."--Kirkus Reviews "An atmospheric shocker...Newton certainly has all the hallmarks and above all the classic noir tone -- urban and nocturnal, stealthy and smoky, grim determination doing its two-step with gallows humor." -- Chicago Sun Times "Newton's version of Patti Black is a potent mix of pain and toughness, vulnerability and adrenalin that anchors the book any time it threatens to careen out of control. She may be too damaged to return, but here's hoping for more from Newton." -- Baltimore Sun "Raw, heart-pounding, adrenalin-producing fiction doesn't get much better than this." -- Library Journal

zlib/no-category/Charlie Newton/Calumet City_17207411.epub

Charlie Newton

2021-09-03