Pearl in the Diamond World (Black Spring Crime)

Pulpy noir meets contemporary hip hop vernacular in this detective thriller. Ted Dwinnels is a Bronx private detective who moonlights as a professional boxer. A 37-year-old bachelor with a "situational addiction to alcohol" and few scruples, Dwinnels is an unlikely hero, but, then again, in the urban milieu Dwinnels inhabits, there are few traditional stand-up guys. When Barry Budacassista, proprietor of a South Bronx fish market, hires Dwinnels to investigate suspicious late-night activity at the market, the PI finds himself immersed in a web of corruption that reaches into city government and the state senate. Despite being beaten, shot and arrested, Dwinnels is drawn ever-deeper into a toxic mix of money, drugs and power.