Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East Side » (First Edition)

MICHAEL CODELLA is a retired New York City Police Detective Sergeant.  Previously assigned to the Special Frauds Squad, Missing Persons Squad, and Housing Police Detective Bureau, he also worked numerous high profile cases with the Drug Enforcement Administration both undercover and as an investigator. He was a supervisor to the Secret Service Task Forces: West African Task Force, Electronic Crimes Task Force, and helped the rescue effort at Ground Zero on 9/11 and for several months thereafter.

The resurrects the vicious New York streets of 1988 and tells the true story of how Detective Sergeant Mike Codella bagged the "Forty Thieves" that surrounded drug lord Davie Blue Eyes and slowly worked his way to the head of the snake.

Publishers Weekly

Setting his story against one of the grittiest New York City neighborhoods of the late 1980s, Codella, a retired detective sergeant in the NYPD, with ghostwriter Bennett, relates how a tradition-rich district still populated by aging Polish and Ukrainian immigrants was threatened with destruction by the heroin trade. Codella describes his own origins in Brooklyn's Canarsie neighborhood, where old-time mob capos and cops lived side-by-side, as a prelude to his joining the police crusade against a ruthless drug kingpin, Davey Blue Eyes, and his loyal gang of smack dealers, "The Forty Thieves." They dominated the part of lower Manhattan known as Alphabet City. Written in a hyper-noir style reminiscent of Richard Price and George Pelecanos, this memoir features all the stuff of an excellent police procedural complete with drug gang rivalries, beatings, killings, and endless dealer collars and convictions. Raw, bloody, and very real, Codella's book is a historical snapshot of what was one of Gotham's most dangerous neighborhoods and the men who brought order to its frightening mayhem. (Nov.)