Pigtown

Amazon.com Review Nobody did police corruption as crisply and with such obvious delight as Caunitz. Just out in paperback, Pigtown is one of the very best thrillers by a fine writer who died in 1996. Many of the details in this story of high-level villainy at the NYPD will ring true because they come from an actual case, and Caunitz was smart enough to realize that he didn't have to gild these nasty lilies. Instead, he concentrated his energies on making Lt. Matthew Stuart as strong and accessible as ever as he traces the killer of a small-time mob figure right upstairs to the top of One Police Plaza. Product Description Detective Lieutenant, Matt Stuart, third generation New York cop, is precinct head in Pigtown, an old wiseguy neighborhood where the name remains but the pig farms are gone in a forgotten section of Brooklyn. Which is where Beansy Rutolo is found inside a refrigerator with his brains blown out. Nobody cares about mob hits anymore, but Matt owes one to Beansy due to an ancient favor on Beansy's part to Matt's father. Matt's investigation of the hit on Beansy rattles the top brass in the Big Building, resulting in Matt taking chances with his career and his life. Pigtown is as stark as today's newspaper, as real as New York itself, and the best book that William Caunitz has ever written. From Booklist In his fifth novel, best-selling author and former NYPD detective Caunitz has produced his most compelling work to date. Matthew Stuart is a detective lieutenant in the Pigtown district of Brooklyn, so named due to the many pig farms that existed there before World War II. What appears to be a Mob matter--the murder of Beansy Rutolo--is complicated because Beansy was known to have sources in the department. Stuart draws the Rutolo hit and refuses to let it go, despite severe internal pressure. He has to call in all his chits, from Jamaican drug lords to the few cops he can trust and, finally, to his lover, also an officer. It's the latter that hurts the most since by gaining his lover's assistance, he risks making their relationship public, a step she's hesitant to take. Stuart ultimately reveals a multilayered web of corruption stretching back to the Serpico hearings and reaching into the highest levels of the department. A tight, carefully plotted thriller with rich, memorable characters. Wes Lukowsky From the Inside Flap A new police thriller of the New York streets by the best-selling author of One Police Plaza. Pigtown is as real as today's newspaper, as stark as New York itself, and the best book that Bill Caunitz has ever written. From Publishers Weekly The gritty realism of Caunitz's new novel (after Cleopatra Gold), as in his earlier ones, reflects the more than two decades he spent with the NYPD. Caunitz's cops sound and act like the real thing, and his villains, while occasionally over the top, are fetchingly sinister (only the extravagant, mostly illicit sex here comes off as more fantasy than reportage). The murder of small-time hood Beansy Rutolo in the Brooklyn neighborhood dubbed "Pigtown" has a special significance for Lieutenant Matthew Stuart: the deceased's unexpected testimony once saved Matt's father from being kicked off the job for political reasons. Now the effort to track down Beansy's killers is revealing corruption that reaches deep into the Department-and goes back years. Matt is struggling with assorted personal demons too-the tragedy that ended his marriage; his secret relationship with a superior officer known as the "Ice Maiden"; and an attempt to frame him for dereliction of duty. Caunitz's prose is flat-footed, weighed down with mundane detail, and his theme of ancient, festering corruption was old hat when Teddy Roosevelt was the city's police commissioner. Still, his feel for cops and cons matches anyone's, as evidenced once again by this flawed but still engaging novel, a police blotter come to life. Author tour. Copyright 1995 Reed