Red on Red: A Novel

The author of the celebrated memoir Blue Blood (“May be the best account ever written of life behind the badge.” —Time) delivers a mesmerizing, relentless thriller that rings with the truth of what it takes to be an NYPD detective. Nick Meehan is introspective, haunted, and burned out on the Job. He is transferred to a squad in the upper reaches of Manhattan and paired with Esposito—a hungry, driven cop who has mostly good intentions but trouble following the rules. The two develop a fierce friendship that plays out against a tangle of mysteries: a hanging in a city park, a serial rapist at large, a wayward Catholic schoolgirl who may be a victim of abuse, and a savage gang war that erupts over a case of mistaken identity.

Red on Red captures the vibrant dynamic of a successful police partnership—the tests of loyalty, the necessary betrayals, the wedding of life and work. Conlon is a natural and perceptive storyteller, awake to the ironies and compromises of life on the Job and the beauty and brutality of the city itself.