Blood Alley

Blood Alley by Tom Coffey   280 pages

New York – Middle of November 1946…Cub reporter and rewrite man Patrick Grimes works the graveyard shift at “The New York Examiner,” one of those sleazy tabloids that sensationalism. Tonight Grimes is sent to help cover the finding of a dead woman’s body down by the East River.  That area is a hell-hole of breweries and tenements. 

He arrives as Finkel the photographer does what he does best: manipulate the body to get the most sensational photograph. Nearby stands the man who called in the tip, William Anderson.  Just as Finkel is wrapping up, the police arrive with lights and sirens blasting. 

Anderson is arrested because he is in possession of a twenty dollar bill and he’s African-American. When police learn the woman is socialite Amanda Price, Anderson is charged and beaten until he signs a confession.

Grimes doesn’t believe that Anderson is guilty and launches his own investigation that takes him from the beautiful homes and  society to the underbelly of the city. Along the way, he learns that there is more to Amanda Price and the Price family than meets the eye.

This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for more than a decade, and I could just kick myself that hadn’t read it before now. What a shame Humphrey Bogart is no longer with us to play Grimes in the movie that should be made; it’s noir at its finest.

The language is real, with the “N” word being used as much as I suspect it was back then. The stereotypes of the newsroom and the boozy city editor are dead on and give the story an authentic feel…or at least as authentic as I have been conditioned to believe.

“Bloody Alley” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.