Rizzo’s War, Lou Manfredo’s stunningly
authentic debut, partners a rookie detective with a
seasoned veteran on his way to retirement in Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn.“There’s no wrong, there’s no right, there just
is.” This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long
veteran of the NYPD, as he passes on the knowledge of his
years of experience to his ambitious new partner, Mike
McQueen, over a year of riding together as detectives in
the Sixty-second Precinct in Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn. McQueen is fresh from the beat in Manhattan, and
Bensonhurst might as well be China for how different it
is. They work on several cases, some big, some small, but
the lesson is always the same. Whether it’s a simple
robbery or an attempted assault, Rizzo’s saying always
seems to bear out.When the two detectives are given the
delicate task of finding and returning the runaway
daughter of a city councilman, who may or may not be more
interested in something his daughter has taken with
her than in her safety, the situation is much more
complex. By the end of Rizzo and McQueen’s year together,
however, McQueen is not surprised to discover that even in
those more complicated cases, Rizzo is still right—there’s
no wrong, there’s no right, there just is.Rizzo’s War is
an introduction to a wonderful new voice in crime fiction
in the Big Apple, ringing with authenticity, full of
personality, and taut with the suspense of real, everyday
life in the big city.