Rizzo’s War, Lou Manfredo’s stunningly authentic debut, partners a rookie detective with a seasoned veteran on his way to retirement in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
“There’s no wrong, there’s no right, there just is.” This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long veteran of the NYPD, as he passes on the knowledge of his years of experience to his ambitious new partner, Mike McQueen, over a year of riding together as detectives in the Sixty-second Precinct in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. McQueen is fresh from the beat in Manhattan, and Bensonhurst might as well be China for how different it is. They work on several cases, some big, some small, but the lesson is always the same. Whether it’s a simple robbery or an attempted assault, Rizzo’s saying always seems to bear out.
When the two detectives are given the delicate task of finding and returning the runaway daughter of a city councilman, who may or may not be more interested in something his daughter has taken with her than in her safety, the situation is much more complex. By the end of Rizzo and McQueen’s year together, however, McQueen is not surprised to discover that even in those more complicated cases, Rizzo is still right—there’s no wrong, there’s no right, there just is.
Rizzo’s War is an introduction to a wonderful new voice in crime fiction in the Big Apple, ringing with authenticity, full of personality, and taut with the suspense of real, everyday life in the big city.
Rizzo's War
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Manfredo's debut introduces a likable if predictable hero, Det. Joe Rizzo, a white knight in the dark city of New York. Though pondering retirement after 27 years on the force, Rizzo is content to nurture a new partner, Mike McQueen, a young NYPD detective who's quickly risen in the ranks through equal parts skill and political opportunity. Together, they tackle cases both big and small, though most of the action involves a missing teenager whose father is a shady Brooklyn councilman. The author excels at moving his plot forward and creating a realistic landscape that shows both the politics and practice of police work. A wonderful husband and dad, Rizzo drops chestnuts of wisdom at every turn. McQueen, meanwhile, comes across as fawning and naïve. Through several subplots, Manfredo lays the foundation for future entries, but their success may require a new dynamic for the syrupy monotony of the two main characters' relationship. 100,000 first printing. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Praise for Rizzo’s War
“Lou Manfredo gets it. As a depiction of the Byzantine, politicized existence of a working American police department, Rizzo’s War stands as a valuable primer. This is good police work as it actually occurs—full of flaw and compromise, absent the pristine science of television procedurals, and bearing only a vague resemblance to what any social or legal philosopher might define as justice. With all of that said, though, sometimes good police work is nearly enough.”
—David Simon, creator of The Wire
“I’ve read a lot of New York cop novels in my lifetime, but Lou Manfredo has managed to introduce totally original characters in Joe Rizzo and his young partner. Rizzo’s War is about story, character, and an engaging literary style that should make the author the next big one.”
—Otto Penzler, owner of The Mysterious Bookshop
"Rizzo’s War is exceptional. Most urban crime novels do not tell it like it is. They give their heroes square jaws and reduce subtle moral shadings to plainly dishonest black-and-white. But this is a bold adventure in the gray zone—in other words, the world that most of us actually live in. The people are recognizable, the talk is good, and the story is swift. Somewhere in fiction heaven, Dashiell Hammett and Jane Austen are both admiring Joe Rizzo’s undeluded pragmatism. It’s a terrific debut and Lou Manfredo is a writer to watch.”
—Peter Blauner, author of Slipping into Darkness and Slow Motion Riot
“A compelling, beautifully written debut novel. Joe Rizzo walks a morally complicated tightrope between self-protection and self-destruction, and we cannot look away. No one knows this world like Lou Manfredo. Rizzo’s War is the best police procedural I’ve read in a decade.”
—Tim McLoughlin, editor of Brooklyn Noir
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Two decent cops in a really crooked city,
By
This review is from: Rizzo's War (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
To begin with, this is not a thriller, it's a police procedural, what the French call a policier. It's a very good policier, but if you're waiting for the big scene, the one a young Schwarzenegger would star in, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
It focuses on two detectives, an older Italian cop (Joe) wise to the ways of the city, and a younger, idealistic Irish cop (Mike) just learning the ropes and wondering whether he should use his NYU degree elsewhere. Except for a few scenes with another cop, a pretty black lesbian policewoman, Joe and Mike are really the only characters we get to know, and following them around in their unmarked Impala pretty much makes up the action of the book. There's lots of philosophizing by these two men in an action profession, but for a while that's OK. Manfredo seems to know how cops talk, and if you don't, you will by the time you finish this book. Unfortunately, Joe and Mike, especially Joe, talk too much. After a couple of hundred pages you really do wish they'd shut up and get on with it. Moreover, when another character comes along, especially another cop, he sounds awfully like Joe and Mike. Even the priests sound like cops. And they all do talk, and talk, and talk. There is very little action in this book. But there is a good spirit hovering over it. Joe and Mike are decent men, two of the most decent you are likely to meet in a modern novel. Priscilla, the black policewoman, is decent too. Joe's wife is a wonderful wife and a perfect mother. The two priests are saintly, however rough their speech. There are bad people, to be sure. Corrupt cops, crooked politicians, nasty perps and an evil motorcycle gang. But, for all the cynical cop-talk, the author seems to believe in the essential goodness of mankind. The book leaves you with a nice aftertaste. I do question one accusation against the Brooklyn political establishment. There is a scene where judgeships are bought for $50,000 each. That seems unrealistic to me. Many years ago, when I graduated from law school and lived in a different part of Brooklyn, I was told that $50,000 was the going price for a judgeship. Hasn't that figure been adjusted for inflation?
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a little editing could go a long way,
By
This review is from: Rizzo's War (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
One of the most frustrating aspects of this book is that it could have been so much better.
The first 125 pages are not only irrelevant to the actual plot, they're badly done. The author takes us through the first few months of McQueen and Rizzo's partnership, showing us a lot of nitty gritty cop work, and telling us how close they've become. There are sentences like, "Over those few weeks he began to realize what a great cop Rizzo was." If the author had shown us the two cops learning to trust and respect each other, and told us about the cases they worked, it would have been a much better intro. There are some irritations that continue through the entire book. I don't think their car was ever once referred to as 'the car'. It was always 'the grey Impala', 'the Chevrolet', 'the grey Chevrolet', and other similar permutations. Likewise, every time they start driving, the author felt it necessary to tell us how they slowly pull away from the curb. Detail is good, especially in a crime novel, but it goes a little too far. The author is also seriously invested in making the reader utterly and completely convinced that the author knows Brooklyn. We're treated to, on occasion, turn-by-turn directions of where they're driving. It breaks the flow of the story, and is totally irrelevant. He also goes to great lengths to show how favors are earned and dispensed, far more than necessary to set up a few details later in the book. And as much as the author goes out of his way to show us that he, a cop, knows the mechanics of police work, there are times where his characters say things to each other that i'm nearly sure would never pass the lips of an actual police detective talking to his partner. My favorite is, "We're going to see a friend of mine down at the State Supreme Court on Adams Street." (p51) I would bet a large sum of money that actual cops have some much simpler way of referring to the State Supreme Court on Adams Street. Once again, it breaks the narrative, but also breaks the characters a little. Once you get to page 150 or so, the real plot is picking up steam, the characters are well established, and the pages fly by. But getting there is no minor feat. If not for the slog of the first 125 pages, i'd have given this book a solid 4 stars. And lastly, i found the ending unsatisfying. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't what i wanted. If this author writes another novel, i may well read it, because this one showed definite promise. I just wish the editor had been a little bolder.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Impala Connection: A Story of Two Cops and their Adventures in an Unmarked Car,
By Kyle Slayzar (Bismarck, ND) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rizzo's War (Audio CD)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Whenever one of my friends studying criminal justice comes over to my apartment and find Law and Order on my DVR, they cringe and give me the look of shame. "That is NOT how it is in real life!!" they would say and I would have to wrestle the remote out of their hands to prevent them from deleting my recordings of Law and Order and Desperate Housewives (I swear, what we record for our women). It is true that there is a gross amount of false preconceived notions about law enforcement due mostly in part to cop dramas and "bad science" passed around the mass media. This is commonly referred to as the "CSI effect."
In reality, however, the world of law enforcement is entirely different as it is filled more with bureaucracy, paperwork, interviews, and note taking than busting down doors. Rizzo's War focuses on this truer aspect more than anything else as the several discs of this set take place almost entirely during an investigation process... in the unmarked Chevrolet Impala to be precise. Rizzo's War follows has the base formula of a standard cop-drama; two differing cops made partners. One is a veteran of the force (Rizzo) while the other is a rookie trying to find his place in the world (McQueen). They both wish to solve a crime but have two different ideas of how to do it. Unlike most cop-dramas, however, Rizzo's War takes the unique approach of presenting the story as a procedural piece rather than use action every now and again. What this means is that Rizzo's War is so precise on cop procedure that it lacks any real action or climax all the while showing procedure to the point of boredom. Meanwhile, the story follows a very, VERY slow method of solving a sex crime. This version is the unabridged one and you know it as every single detail is spelled out in a way that would make Tom Clancy think his books are short and lack sufficient details. I fell asleep several times while trying to listen to the CDs. However, I think this was intentional as, again, this is a procedural account of law enforcement rather than a sensationalized cop-drama. All in all, Rizzo's War had a lot of potential but, with a lacking amount of actual drama and a lot more car scenes with no actual climax... it just didn't quite do it in for me.
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