Customer Reviews

The Sweet Life of Jimmy Riley: A Novel

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I enjoyed reading this book, but if you are in the market for a police thriller (à la, Harry Bosch), this is not what you're looking for. It's more of a psychological study, a confessional transcript of Reardon's life as a dirty cop.

During a time when jobs were scarce, James Reardon found himself in a job he did not believe in: a vice cop. Apparently people like to gamble, and it was his job to shut down all the gambling joints in Brooklyn -- no mean task. Only, he didn't. Instead he took bribes to look the other way, and only busted the bookies who were not paying bribes. This worked out well for all parities, until the reformers stepped in.

The American social critic H. L. Mencken wrote, "I believe in liberty. in any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen. I am against bureaucrats, policemen, wowsers, snouters, smellers, uplifters, lawyers, bishops and all other enemies of the free man. I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law." There's a lot of such sentiment in Reardon's book. Also like Mencken, Reardon regards politicians who run on a reform platform to be imbeciles at best and power-hungry hypocrites at worst.

I will voice no judgement, and leave it to your opinion, as to whether Reardon's self-justification for being a dirty cop is valid, but I confess that throughout the book it's difficult not to cheer him on. If it's any consolation, the book ends with him in Dannemora prison on what he (naturally) considers a trumped-up conviction.

James Reardon died in 1998 in Florida as the result of a car crash. He was 80-years-old and really had led a sweet life.