The Old Turk's Load

A million-dollar load of Mafia heroin from an "Old Turk" gets waylaid during the 1967 Newark riots. A motley assortment of thieves, opportunists, slimeballs, and a few decent folk are out to find it. This Gregory Gibson novel is rife with characters, perhaps too many, who fight and kill in their attempts to get their hands on the drugs. There are so many people that it's difficult to keep them straight in the audiobook version. Narrator R.C. Bray sounds like an old-time movie newscaster with his punchy Walter Winchell delivery. Kudos to him for imitating a man with a laryngectomy who emerges as a main character. Annoying lengthy silences between chapters, about 10 seconds long, cause the listener to constantly check the player. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

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.