The Angel of Montague Street: A Gripping Crime Noir Thriller of Family, Mob Secrets, and Revenge in 1970s Brooklyn

The Angel of Montague Street: A Gripping Crime Noir Thriller of Family, Mob Secrets, and Revenge in 1970s Brooklyn

In the fall of '73, Brooklyn, New York, is home to worn-down hotels, wiseguys, immigrants, the disturbed, the disenfranchised, and a few people just trying to make an honest buck. When Silvano Iurata's troubled brother, Noonie, rumored to be living in Brooklyn Heights, goes missing, Silvano returns to a place he swore he'd never set foot in again. Silvano left Brooklyn a long time ago -- wanting to leave behind his family and their seedy mob connections, and a past that just won't stay buried. The jungles of Viet Nam felt more hospitable to him than his own hometown; now that he's back, he doesn't intend to stay for long. His cousin Domenic has harbored a deadly grudge against him for something that happened when they were teenagers, but they aren't kids anymore, and his cousin has some dangerous friends. Silvano needs to find out what happened to his brother and get out -- fast. A tale of revenge and redemption, The Angel of Montague Street has the same vivid characters, razor-sharp detail, and dead-on dialogue that made Norman Green's debut novel, Shooting Dr. Jack , an unforgettable snapshot of life on the streets of Brooklyn. With its perceptive, poignant heart and gripping plot, this is literary suspense at its best. “Green writes about mobster families with a knowledge that is unnerving in its intimacy. Here he extends that empathy to...those ghosts who live to haunt the streets of a depressed city.” - Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review “As a fresh face in the hard-boiled crime fiction sweepstakes, Green is carving out a niche for himself with his piercing portraits of men trapped by their tainted pasts.” - Publishers Weekly In the fall of '73, Brooklyn, New York, is home to worn-down hotels, wiseguys, immigrants, the disturbed, the disenfranchised, and a few people just trying to make an honest buck. When Silvano Iurata's troubled brother, Noonie, rumored to be living in Brooklyn Heights, goes missing, Silvano returns to a place he swore he'd never set foot in again. Silvano left Brooklyn a long time ago -- wanting to leave behind his family and their seedy mob connections, and a past that just won't stay buried. The jungles of Viet Nam felt more hospitable to him than his own hometown; now that he's back, he doesn't intend to stay for long. His cousin Domenic has harbored a deadly grudge against him for something that happened when they were teenagers, but they aren't kids anymore, and his cousin has some dangerous friends. Silvano needs to find out what happened to his brother and get out -- fast. A tale of revenge and redemption, The Angel of Montague Street has the same vivid characters, razor-sharp detail, and dead-on dialogue that made Norman Green's debut novel, Shooting Dr. Jack , an unforgettable snapshot of life on the streets of Brooklyn. With its perceptive, poignant heart and gripping plot, this is literary suspense at its best. Norman Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful, maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at work on his second novel. The Angel of Montague Street By Green, Norman Dark Alley ISBN: 0060934115 Chapter One The Montague was an old whore of a hotel; she stood on the corner of Henry and Montague Streets in Brooklyn, New York. She was a couple of decades past her prime when Silvano Iurata landed there in the fall of '73, but if you squinted your eyes hard enough to filter out the grime you could still see something of what she used to be when she was young and glorious, green marble columns in the lobby thirty feet high, floor-to-ceiling windows, ornate wainscoting, carved mahogany front desk, plaster lions molded into the ceiling, so far up you could barely make them out, up there snarling down at you in sooty malevolence. She was maybe eighteen stories high, the lower floors more desirable than the upper ones because only one of the three elevators worked. One of the other two was generally shut down for repairs and the third was broken and sealed off for good. In one corner of the lobby was a bar, a dimly lit room behind swinging doors that had the image of a piano frosted into the thick green glass. Silvano flopped on an ancient couch and waited for the night manager to locate his paperwork. He glanced in the bar's direction but he had no real desire to go in; bars were not his thing, particularly when they were small, dank, and heavy with the smell of beer, urine, and unwashed bodies. He wasn't that thirsty, couldn't imagine being that thirsty. An old guy with a cracked leather face and a red potato nose watched him from the bar doorway, and after a while, his beverage in his hand, he made his way carefully over to where Silvano sat. "Excuse