A New York Times "Notable Book of the Year"
14 Peck Slip
Not since the debut of Joseph Wambaugh has a first novel packed
the gut-wrenching punch of Ed Dee's electrifying 14 Peck Slip. And not since
Robert Daley and William Caunitz has anyone captured the pathos, violence, and dark humor
of being a cop in New York City. Whether it is the complex interplay between two longtime
partners, the conversation in a police bar at closing time, or a midnight call to look
down at the body of a dead informant, Ed Dee captures a world of law and disorder with an insider's relentless vision.
In the darkness of a December morning in lower Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market a mob rip-off is
under way: thousands of pounds of fish are calmly "tapped" — stolen — from wholesalers on the street. It's the price of doing business.
But detectives Joe Gregory and Anthony Ryan have not come to Peck
Slip to stop fish tapping. They've come to watch a fifty-gallon drum being dumped into the East River by a mobster in a Mets hat.
Convinced they're seeing a burial, Gregory and Ryan call in police divers and get a surprise. The dive brings up a barrel, but it's not theirs.
Instead, this one is old and rusty, and inside is the body of a man in blue — a cop named Jinx Mulgrew, who disappeared ten years ago.
Like a shark, the Great Gregory plunges his teeth into the
ten-year-old death, hoping that it will finally put his career over the top. Ryan, who
reads Cheever and contemplates early retirement, approaches the murder in his own
methodical way, knowing that it will mean more time away from his wife and their
red-shingled house in Yonkers. For both men the case leads behind the blue wall of silence
into a mystery of adultery and corruption. And as they move from mob social clubs to
retired police veterans, from Mulgrew's high-strung, sophisticated widow to a sultry
Puerto Rican bar maid who was once Mulgrew's lover, the two cops must confront their
relationships with their job, their family, and each other.
Violent, funny, and moving, 14 Peck Slip is full of
details that only a police veteran could capture, such as the beginning of a long night in
a stakeout car: "We were like an old couple preparing for a night of TV. We had our
favorite chairs and a snack." Or getting ready for a raid: "'AR 15,' he said.
'Light as a feather.' 'Looks like a toy,' I said, waving off the gun. 'They're all toys,
Ryan. This ain't no job for a grown man.'" Or the Great Gregory, after being
hospitalized after an ambush outside the mob hangout: "'I love this freaking job, Pally.'"
14 Peck Slip is as authentic — and entertaining — as it gets.
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Copyright 2000-2004 Edward Dee
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