A follow-up to Dope Thief follows a drive-by shooting from the perspectives of the investigating detective, the fathers of two young victims and a junkie uncle, all of whom go to extreme lengths to uncover the truth. - (Baker & Taylor)Follows a drive-by shooting from the perspectives of the investigating detective, the fathers of two young victims, and a junkie uncle, all of whom go to extreme lengths to uncover the truth. - (Baker & Taylor)
In The Wolves of Fairmount Park, Dennis Tafoya’s lyrical, intense, sometimes tragic and sometimes hopeful second novel, the details of a drive-by shooting of two teenagers in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood are filled in from four perspectives: Brendan Donovan, a cop and the father of the boy shot and left comatose; George Parkman Sr., another father, this one of the boy who was killed; Danny Martinez, a cop whose job it is to investigate the killing; and Orlando Donovan, the junkie uncle of the cop’s kid, who happens to live nearby.
No one knows what the two boys were doing in front of a dope house on Roxborough Avenue in the middle of the night, what business they might have had with gangs like Green Lane or the Tres Nortes. Even though they had a thousand dollars with them, they were good boys. Everyone says, “They were good boys.”
Through the fast-paced interweaving of these four distinct voices, Dennis Tafoya, author of the acclaimed Dope Thief, tells the moving story of two kids in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the lengths that the people around them will go to find the truth.
DENNIS TAFOYA was born in Philadelphia and now lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The Wolves of Fairmount Park is his second novel.
- (
McMillan Palgrave)
Booklist Reviews
Two middle-class teenagers are victims of a drive-by shooting as they stand in front of a Philadelphia house where drugs are sold. One dies, the other is left in a coma. That straightforward premise compels this gritty, insightful crime novel. What were the teens doing there? Buying drugs? Who ordered the shooting? Why? What does it mean for the endlessly roiling competition among the city's drug dealers? An unlikely handful of people want answers to those questions: a rising young detective with contacts in the drug world; the boys' fathers, one a Philly beat cop, the other a well-to-do businessman; and one boy's uncle, a junkie. The path to the truth is circuitous and bloody and leads all over the city. Tafoya's characters, whether cops, killers, or victims, are multidimensional, and his portrait of the city's drug trade is bleakly realistic. Tafoya's Dope Thief (2009) was a fine debut. This much more ambitious follow-up cements his position as an up-and-coming hard-boiled writer. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
