Brooklyn Supreme
A Novel
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
A hard-edged literary thriller about a racially charged police shooting, by one of “crime fiction’s most gifted writers” (George Pelecanos)—now in paperback
No one knows better than Will Way that it’s not so easy to get out of Brooklyn. Seeking escape, Will finds possible upward mobility in a relationship with Regine Pomeroy, the daughter of Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Henry K. Pomeroy. But Regine is a troubled young woman, and one day Will is called upon by her father to fix a situation that proves beyond fixing.
Two decades later, Will has returned to the borough and, like many of his peers, joined the NYPD. Now it’s his job to get beat cops out of trouble—cops like Georgina Lee, an inexperienced officer who shot and killed an African American teenager after he robbed a bodega. But when it turns out the perpetrator might not have been armed, Lee’s case becomes a publicity firestorm. Several men vying for higher office in Brooklyn use it to further their ambitions, and Will finds himself caught not only in the bureaucracy of the NYPD and Brooklyn politics, but also in his deeply confused conscience.
As he tries to unravel so many different versions of the truth, Will’s past catches up with him; his distant father and Regine Pomeroy reenter his life, and her father tries to capitalize on the case for political gain. As lines are drawn across the city, Will must make decisions he never expected he would have to make, whose outcomes will cost him dearly.
Brooklyn Supreme is a clear-eyed exploration of the fault lines of class, gender, and race in America, and a stunning portrayal of Brooklyn’s justice system. A standout crime novel by a writer with an undeniable gift, Brooklyn Supreme is a gritty and gut-wrenching read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this uneven crime novel from Reuland (Semiautomatic), Will Way, a jaded Patrolmen's Benevolent Association union official, gets caught in a political firestorm after a rookie cop shoots and kills a Black teenager on a Brooklyn street corner. A gun is found underneath the body, but as Way investigates, he uncovers the truth—it was planted there to clear the officer involved in the shooting. The case quickly becomes a feeding frenzy for the media, and when Way's murky connection with a prominent Brooklyn supreme court judge is exposed, he becomes the next target for a mob looking for someone to blame for the racial and socioeconomic injustice in America. Though the raw social commentary is as powerful as brass knuckles to the skull and the gritty existentialism palpable ("I always believed rolling in the dogshit of the world had made me wiser in compensation, but possibly all it did was make me stink"), Way comes across as a hard-boiled cliché—an emotionally damaged cop readers have seen innumerable times before. Assured prose and a strong ending suggest Reuland can do better next time.