The Old Turk's Load

First-time novelist Gibson delivers an assured, complex PI story that opens during the 1967 Newark riots, when a load of Turkish heroin ($5 million value) imported by Mafia crime lord Angelo DiNoto goes astray. Nostalgia, noir, and narcotics are blended together into a runaway train journey of a story that careens down the track at breakneck speed, carrying along characters who include addicts, alcoholics, federal agents, enforcers, activists, crooked cops, fiery sophisticated females, the Mafia, and protagonist PI Kelly. The dissolute Kelly has a brain injury, and his cerebral misfiring lends authenticity to the overall narrative structure, which often luxuriates in bizarre scenarios delivered in frenetic prose. Although initially hired by the corrupt property developer Mundi to keep tabs on his radicalized daughter, Kelly is drawn into trying to retrieve the missing heroin, which Mundi has acquired.