Rizzo's Fire

As twenty-year veteran Joe Rizzo edges closer to retirement, things only seem to get more difficult: having promised his wife he'd quit smoking, he's working the most baffling case of his career, with a new partner to boot.





Robert Lauria was practically a hermit, and was dead ten days before anyone found him. Fired from his job as a shoe salesman weeks ago, he rarely left his apartment and had no visitors except his cousin, who says she hardly knew him. So who strangled him late one night as he made tea in the kitchen in his pajamas? And could there be a connection to the headline-grabbing murder of a Broadway producer a day earlier?





Rizzo and his new partner, Priscilla Jackson, carefully comb through the life of this forgotten man, even though their superiors have already put the case on the back burner. Tasked with navigating the twin labyrinths of the truth and NYPD politics, they must find the killer and bring him to justice.





And what they discover along the way will surprise everyone.



Lou Manfredo worked in the Brooklyn criminal justice system for twenty-five years. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Brooklyn Noir. His first novel, Rizzo's War, was published by Corvus in November 2010. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife.



As a depiction of the Byzantine, politicized existence of a working American police department, Rizzo's War stands as a valuable primer.



As stark and true as David Simon's faultless depiction of the Baltimore PD in The Wire...



Riveting... dealing with every aspect of American policing from dirty politics to the intricate hierarchy of biker gangs.



Brooklyn, as the portrayal in Manfredo's excellent debut makes clear, is a different world... Rizzo's War is a police procedural of more than usual intelligence.



Richly confirming the extraordinary promise of the first book, the follow up has style and authenticity, giving a no nonsense depiction of what life is like on the streets for a New York detective. But this time Manfredo adds yet more subtlety to his portrait of the city's finest. This is Ed McBain for the 21st century - and that's high praise... It confirms Manfredo as one of New York's finest thriller writers.