The Old Turk's Load

February 4, 2013
The 1967 Newark, N.J., riots form the backdrop for Gibson’s quirky, amusing first novel. Farmed on “a remote Anatolian plateau” by an old Turk, “ten plastic sacks of diacetyl morphine” arrive in New Jersey in the care of the notorious Street Brothers, who promptly lose the load during the chaos of the riots that summer. The mob wants it back, but the eccentric Mailman sees it as a shot at a better life. Meanwhile, a businessman hires Manhattan PI Walkaway Kelly to spy on his daughter, the heiress Gloria Mundi. Gloria is dabbling in subversion with “the well-known revolutionary” Kevin Gallagher, a mole for the feds. Kelly’s world-weary observations anchor the action: “If there was a genetic predisposition to the low life, this poor bastard had it.” This well-handled caper novel recalls the late great Donald Westlake. Readers will want to see more crime, and more comedy, from Gibson. Agent: Neeti Madan, Sterling Lord Literistic.

April 15, 2013

First-time novelist Gibson delivers an assured, complex PI story that opens during the 1967 Newark riots, when a load of Turkish heroin ($5 million value) imported by Mafia crime lord Angelo DiNoto goes astray. Nostalgia, noir, and narcotics are blended together into a runaway train journey of a story that careens down the track at breakneck speed, carrying along characters who include addicts, alcoholics, federal agents, enforcers, activists, crooked cops, fiery sophisticated females, the Mafia, and protagonist PI Kelly. The dissolute Kelly has a brain injury, and his cerebral misfiring lends authenticity to the overall narrative structure, which often luxuriates in bizarre scenarios delivered in frenetic prose. Although initially hired by the corrupt property developer Mundi to keep tabs on his radicalized daughter, Kelly is drawn into trying to retrieve the missing heroin, which Mundi has acquired. VERDICT Breaking new ground in crime fiction with his unusual protagonist, Gibson gets a gold star for deftness, great writing, lethal encounters, mayhem, murder, and bleak black humor.--Seamus Scanlon, Ctr. for Worker Education, CUNY

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