Dark Horse

April 4, 2016
Dark Horse, a brand of particularly potent heroin, is cutting a broad swath through Boston’s South End in Flynn’s overly ambitious second Eddy Harkness novel (after 2014’s Third Rail). Meanwhile, a hurricane hits Southie hard, displacing many residents, some of whom take advantage of a strange old law that allows them to seek sanctuary in the quiet suburb of Nagog. Boston mayor Michael O’Mara and some of the city’s most powerful organizations—the Manchester Group and a “private civic think tank” called the Harbormasters—aren’t too upset by the havoc, as it represents a chance to rebuild the working-class neighborhood into an affluent enclave. Flynn is an extremely observant, skillful writer (“Stealing Yankee money arouses a special kind of anger, since each penny is so carefully pinched”). And Harkness is an attractive character, but the plot becomes so broad—drug trafficking, conspiracy, gentrification, political machinations, even a subplot involving the Boston Public Library—that the book loses focus and urgency. Agent: Dan Conaway: Writers House.

June 1, 2016

During a late-summer hurricane, Boston narcotics detective Eddy Harkness and his team discover a deaf boy, alone with the still warm body of his uncle and a boatload of Dark Horse, a particularly lethal heroin brand, in a South End apartment. Mayor Mark O'Meara is a notorious slimeball in a city known for monumental scumbags. His latest scheme is a major real estate development that will replace South End's poor residents with a pristine monument to yuppie living. Eddy thinks that is a bad idea, especially when it becomes clear the mayor's plotting may be the fuel behind the surge in Dark Horse. VERDICT Populated with crafty politicians and hard-core activists raging against the machine, Flynn's follow-up to Third Rail is a terrific atmospheric thriller. Fans of Dennis Lehane and Robert B. Parker will welcome this Boston cop.

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