The Exiled

February 1, 2016
Charles, the pseudonym of Christopher Narozny (Jonah Man), chronicles the fraught career of Wes Raney, a former New York City narcotics detective, in this dark gem of a novel. In Brooklyn in 1984, Wes, a drug-addicted undercover cop, attempted to bust a sadistic crime boss with results that led to his disgrace and his exile to rural New Mexico, where he became a homicide detective. In 2002, he investigates multiple murders in what appears to be a drug deal gone bad. The case reawakens something long dormant in Raney, and as he reevaluates the wreckage of his past, he’s forced to confront old demons once again. Powered by relentless pacing and fully realized characters, this brutal narrative illuminates the harrowing realms of drug addiction and organized crime. Readers won’t soon forget Raney’s blood-soaked and coke-fueled journey through self-loathing to some semblance of salvation. Agent: Peter McGuigan, Foundry Literary + Media.

February 15, 2016
Under a pseudonym, the author of Jonah Man (2012) delivers a dark tale of a Brooklyn undercover cop who becomes a homicide detective in the Southwest. In 2002 New Mexico, Wes Raney and Sheriff Bay investigate a grisly triple murder on the Wilkins ranch. That's a long way from Brooklyn, which Raney left under duress 18 years earlier. Roughly alternating chapters show how his troubled career ended in New York and how he investigates the current murders. In 1984 Brooklyn, he's a narcotics detective and a talented amateur boxer nicknamed Deadly Dixon, working with DA Stone, who wants to completely dismantle a drug organization. Raney gets so deeply into his undercover role that he gets hooked on cocaine and is drawn far enough into the organization's violence that it could land him in prison. One of his targets observes, "You'd bash [a woman's] head in yourself if I gave you a dimebag to do it." But Raney's fiancee, Sophia Ferguson, is the daughter of a retired police captain who gives Raney a way out of trouble: move to New Mexico and forever cut ties with Sophia and the child she's expecting. Forbidden to ever see his daughter and "exiled from the lives and the work he valued most," he pursues the Wilkins murders and continues to struggle with his addiction. Sometimes he flushes illicit drugs to avoid temptation, and sometimes he holds back dimebags for himself. Raney can't shake his slough of despond. Sheriff Bay tells him, "On a good day I look at you and I don't see a shred of happiness." The story isn't so much about solving the murders, though that gets taken care of. It's about Raney's personal journey--how he wants to be good but struggles against his weaknesses and might fail. Readers may be conflicted as to whether to like him--he's no hero--but they'll feel the man's pain. Edgy and satisfying. A sequel would be most welcome.

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March 1, 2016
Charles' brisk, efficient cop novel brings to mind Vonnegut's observation that while we are surely victims of fate, we can also be among fate's cruelest agents. New York narcotics detective Wes Raney made some bad career decisionsincluding an overfondness for the dealers' white powderand the damage from those decisions led to disgrace, the loss of his family, and exile to New Mexico, where his new beat is mostly empty desert. Then a murder brings him back to homicide work and calls up his past. Charles has structured his narrative to go back and forth in time. We meet Raney at the murder scene in the present; then we're in Brooklyn in 1984, and young Raney is busy earning the trust of a dealer he hopes to betray. We are, in effect, watching the present hurrying to catch up with the past, and it makes for an extra level of tension. A fresh spin on a genre staple: the haunted cop.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)