Shamrock Alley »

Ronald Damien Malfi is the author of The Fall of Never, The Nature Of Monsters, and Via Dolorosa. He lives in Baltimore.

When Secret Service agent John Mavio infiltrates a ring of organized crime leaders involved in an elaborate counterfeit money operation, including two violent Irish criminals from Hell’s Kitchen, he risks his life to stop what may be the most sinister operation in the country’s history. Every step of drugs, booze, and blood brings him closer to his own demise in a gory, dangerous undercover world far removed from his own personal reality, which includes his pregnant wife and terminally ill father. But when these two worlds meet, Mavio must implement every skill he has learned to save himself, his family, and the people of New York City.

Publishers Weekly

Malfi (The Fall of Never) draws on the experiences of his Secret Service agent father, who infiltrated the Irish gang known as the Westies decades earlier, for this plodding crime thriller. Secret Service agent John Mavio seeks to bring down two violent gangsters, Jimmy Kahn and Mickey O'Shay, in New York City's Hell's Kitchen. To do so, Mavio poses as a fellow crook interested in buying counterfeit money from Kahn and O'Shay, the latter, despite a long track record of bloodshed, having avoided jail even after a police officer witnessed one of his murders. Will Mavio be able to overcome Kahn and O'Shay's suspicions to get evidence to prosecute them? Few readers will care, given the predictable plot and ponderous prose (e.g., "Manhattan has a way of leading its occupants to certain destinations without said occupants necessarily realizing he or she has been led"). (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.