Busted Flush Press has just released its first original novel, Tower ($15 trade paperback, 9781935415077/1935415077, September 2009), billed as a crime tale, and what a tale it is. Ken Bruen ("a mad Celt from the West of Ireland") and Reed Farrel Coleman ("a Brooklyn rabbi/poet") teamed up to write a story of love, betrayal and fate, with competing and complementary narratives by Nick and Todd, lifelong friends from a rough Brooklyn neighborhood. They grow up to be petty wiseguys, into a few scams, working for a Bible-quoting, small-time racketeer named Boyle. When one of their jobs ends with Todd killing someone during a robbery, then telling Boyle that Nick did it, the book shifts into a higher, more jittery gear. Tower is a brutal, and sometimes tender, noir novel that careens through Brooklyn, Manhattan, Boston and Philadelphia, leaving you breathless and stunned.

After Todd's cold-blooded prologue, Nick's voice sets the tone:

10 Months Earlier.

My old man was as Irish as they come, Micksville in extremis. See that in extremis, so you know I'm not just some thug, I got me some learning. Not that I wanted it but my old man, he was a whore for books, always trotting out some shit, a book in his hand every goddamn minute. My Mom, she'd go

"Your father and books, don't get me started."

As if she needed an excuse. She was Jewish, she was born started. To say they were a poor match? Man, they were the worst marriage on the block and we had some beauties there. See the street on a Saturday night, after a ballgame and the brews had been sunk? Buckets of blood and recriminations.

Did the cops come?

Yeah, right.

Most of the participants were cops.

Mick neighborhood, what'd you expect?

--Marilyn Dahl