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Ebook Details
  • 08/2014
  • 9780990560326
  • 336 pages
  • $9.99
Paperback Details
  • 08/2014
  • 9781467545303
  • 336 pages
  • $17.95
Requiem for Rosco
Requiem for Rosco is a complex murder mystery set in Chicago. It gives readers a gritty, poignant tour of the city, navigating from the Gold Coast to the housing projects, and ultimately to the financial center on LaSalle Street. It is as much an intimate love story as it is a mystery. Gallagher's quick-cut pacing is a grabber, keeping three distinctive male characters and equally strong female characters in balance. The multiple viewpoints of this ambitious literary architecture allow Gallagher to delve intimately into the murder of Rosco Mink, a wealthy investment manager. Longer initial chapters grow shorter and move faster, accelerating the cinematic pace. Mink's vicious murder, and the personal consequences to those drawn into the investigation, are developed with great depth and intensity.
Reviews
Complex plotting and well-rounded characters highlight Gallagher’s intricate serial killer whodunit. First, two Chicago prostitutes have their throats slit by a murderer who places lit votive candles near their naked, bound, and gagged corpses. Next, two men are fatally stabbed in the lungs by an ice pick, so that they drown in their own blood. When a third man dies the same way, the inquiry falls to Tom “Tow Truck” Miller, a 30-plus year veteran of the Chicago PD. The move affords Tow a new lease on his professional life since he shot a child, who turned out to have been brandishing only a realistic-looking handgun, which caused a firestorm of negative publicity for the police. Tow’s future still lies in the hands of a review board, headed by a woman with her eyes on the mayoralty. Gallagher makes every individual feel real, from the tormented Tow to a businessman with a secret to hide about the last slaying. Fans of procedurals with depth will be pleased. (BookLife)
Kirkus Reviews

In this debut crime thriller, a disgraced former Chicago Gangs Unit cop seeks vindication and redemption while investigating a series of grisly murders. One year after accidentally shooting and killing an 11-year-old boy in a Chicago housing project, Detective Tow Truck Miller is offered a transfer to Homicide. At the same time, a serial killer starts terrorizing the city, seemingly exacting revenge for the murders of two call girls. As Miller races against time to catch the killer, he also searches for a witness who might be able to clear him in the previous, tragic shooting. Gallagher efficiently juggles concurrent subplots that propel the novel forward as they introduce a disparate gallery of characters, including trader Richard Landon, whose run of bad luck includes a devastating financial loss at the hands of Rosco Mink, the serial killer s latest victim; Landon s sexually voracious, high-maintenance lover, Vicki; his former fiancée, Katie O Connor, whose mother, Madeline, oversees the police board that will decide Miller s fate; and 12-year-old Ben Foster and his new friend, Spider, whose impoverished families have been devastated by gang violence. This is an ambitious police procedural, murder mystery and social-issues novel in the vein of Richard Price, the author of Clockers (1992). Gallagher vividly renders Chicago s tony Gold Coast, whose denizens have real money...[a]nd power, as well as gang-infested projects and insulated suburbs that hide their own secrets.... Gallagher is better at conveying how the city works for rich, white people, and how it doesn t work for struggling African-Americans. For example, during the media circus surrounding the serial murders, Ben notes how, when his father was shot, there were no headlines for him. The pieces of the puzzle ultimately fit together, albeit not all seamlessly, but the twist ending packs a lingering wallop. To paraphrase one of Gallagher s own character descriptions, this is a novel with high expectations for itself a book with depth that, despite its shortcomings, is endlessly interesting.

Formats
Ebook Details
  • 08/2014
  • 9780990560326
  • 336 pages
  • $9.99
Paperback Details
  • 08/2014
  • 9781467545303
  • 336 pages
  • $17.95
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