Bag Men: A Novel [Hardcover]

Mark Costello (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1997

The authenticity of George V. Higgins and the hipness of Carl Hiassen combine to galvanic effect in this debut police thriller of Boston in the sixties.

The authenticity of George V. Higgins and the hipness of Carl Hiassen combine to galvanic effect in this debut police thriller of Boston in the sixties. An urban police thriller and first novel with a differenceliterary smarts and the real inside skinny on big-city politics and crime fighting. New Year's Day, 1965. The body of Father George Sedgewick is discovered on a snow-covered runway of Logan Airport, brutally murdered. No leads. Missing: four thousand hosts, blessed by the Pope, meant to be given out to the faithful at the first English-language mass in America later that year. Assigned to the case: Ray Dunn, rising young assistant district attorney, son of a corrupt cop. In another part of the city, legendary narcotics detective Manny Manning begins a desperate search for the shadowy source of deadly new heroin hitting the streets. This time Manny is determined to reach the top, but his adversary is cunning, brutaland branching out into a strange new drug called "acid". . . These quests for a killer and a dealer will intersect, unleashing the ghosts of the past and unlocking the secrets of Boston's most powerful institutions. Authentic, knowing, bracingly cynical, Bag Men immediately launches John Flood into the first rank of America's crime writers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a hardboiled thriller set in a very particular place and time: Boston, 1965. The complex plot is launched by the discovery of a priest's mutilated corpse on a snowy runway at Logan Airport; meanwhile, a new, potent variety of heroin is killing users in the slums of Boston. These two seemingly unrelated stories quickly begin to intersect and converge, entangling the personal lives of two dedicated but very different investigators. As the search for the ultimate culprit heats up, Flood demonstrates a fine ear for dialog, a strong sense of rhythm, and a convincing feel for the Boston of thirty years ago.

From Publishers Weekly

Spare writing and a roster of flawed, struggling characters highlight this terse, engrossing debut, which earns high marks for its original setting and plot. It's 1965 in Boston, just before the first English-language mass in America is to be celebrated by Cardinal Cushing. George Sedgewick, the priest who is delivering communion wafers personally blessed by the pope, is murdered at Logan Airport, and the hosts are stolen. In charge of the case is Ray Dunn, the ADA who fixes things for DA Johnny Cahill and cleans up after Johnny's playboy son, Eddie. Meanwhile, narcotics detective Manny Manning, searching for the supplier of a killer strain of heroin, hears about the imminent street presence of a new drug that's about to be declared illegal in the U.S., a drug called LSD. The two searches converge when the past of the dead priest points to electroshock therapy and secret experiments conducted at the naval base at Portsmouth. It's a bleak tale told with no frills?and no nobility either. In the world that Flood?a Boston federal prosecutor writing under a pseudonym?has created, no one is untainted: Ray Dunn is haunted by the arrest of his father in a police corruption scandal and is compromised by his clean-up activities for the DA; Manny Manning was an informant gathering evidence against his fellow cops for the feds; and even the Monsignor who knows Sedgewick lies. In Flood's 1965 Boston, there are no easy answers and no clear victors?except perhaps the pseudonymous Flood himself, a natural storyteller, who, with this accomplished first novel, has claimed his own piece of turf in the city of George Higgins and Robert Parker.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (January 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393039986
• ISBN-13: 978-0393039986
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,870,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More than mildly entertaining: A relatively original work., March 1, 2000

By 

David Pontrello - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bag Men (Paperback)

Although a remarkably depressing story, with few characters you can actually empathize with, in many ways it was a pleasant departure from some of the traditional serial killer and "screenplay" style thrillers.

Being set back in a time before mine (1960s), in a city that I have only visited (Boston), I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but I can say that it seemed quite a beleivable cast and environment -- perhaps a little "hokey" at times when references to the hippie movement, tripping, and the drug culture are involved.

The most disconcerting point I found was that the story never really concluded. The book ended, and we are given some information on what happens to the characters, but I can't help feeling that one or more entire chapters were left out of the back of my copy.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Beantown Crime Novel, August 18, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Bag Men: A Novel (Hardcover)

This tale of two Irish brothers from Boston, captures the essence of a specific time and place, Boston 1965. Flood manages to portray Boston in the drug addled 60's at a time when the Catholic Church and race relations were both under extreme controversy. It isamazing that within his complex and action packed plot Flood takes the time to acurately portray Boston in such a way that being a Bostonian myself, I was blown away by the sheer amount of image evoking descriptions and observations of my hometown. This made the book even more realistic and enthralling, elevating a great thriller into the category of Great literature. Unlike Grisham whose cardboard cutout characters are undistinguishable from one another, Flood is a superior character writer who has supreme command of his story and geography, written in fine, terse language that harkens back to Chandler and Hammet. If Americans knew their ass from their elbow about great writing, BAGMEN would be number 1 on the bestseller list and NOT The Firm. However, dispersions cast against my ignorant countrymen aside, I hungrily look forward to Mr. Flood's next work, God Bless His Beantown Soul

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beantown Blues, July 28, 2002

By 

Virginia Lore "rumtussle" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bag Men: A Novel (Hardcover)

John Flood's Bag Men takes place in the Boston of 1965, post JFK assassination and pre MLK assassination. The old order crumbles to give way to the new. The Catholic church plans to conduct mass in English. The boys in blue who've always kept order with their fists are under scrutiny for the beating of three black choirboys on Christmas Eve. And on the streets, addicts die in record numbers from strange new synthetic drugs.

The book opens with the body of a murdered priest, found on a snowy runway at Logan Airport. Ray Dunn, assistant D.A. and son of a cop who was on the take, investigates the killing as his younger brother Biff joins up with the guys at Narcotics. In the background: the shadowy hand of the federal government conducting experiments on psychiatric patients.

Bag Men fulfills its potential as a suspenseful read with an unguessable climax. Some of the secondary characters are a little weak, but the primary characters are interesting enough to keep the reader's attention on the story. One note: John Flood is the pseudonym of Mark Costello, a federal prosecutor in Boston and author of Big If. Bag Men is the more rough-hewn of the two books. So if you read Bag Men and enjoy it, do yourself a favor and read Big If as well.