A Black Sail: A Coleridge Taylor Mystery

In July 1976, newspaper reporter Coleridge Taylor is covering Operation Sail, the parade of tall ships in New York Harbor celebrating the bicentennial of the American Revolution. When the police launch on which Taylor is a passenger pulls a body from the river, his inside source, Marty Phillips, suspects it's the opening salvo in a drug war between the Italian Mafia and the Chinese tongs. Heroin is a way of life in the Big Apple. The FBI and the NYPD vie to solve the murder, but there is more bubbling below the surface than the usual interagency rivalry. And Taylor will come close to dying to find out how rotten things can get. This latest series outing (after Drop Dead Punk) offers a blast from the time machine back to New York City's bad old days in the 1970s. Taylor, while out to get the story and get back to the crime beat, is complex and has a good heart.