The Old Turk's Load
*Starred Review* It’s 1967, and a shipment of the world’s finest heroin is en route to Angelo DiNoto, New Jersey’s top crime boss. The Newark riots intercede, however, and 10 pounds of pure Turkish heroin, worth $5 million, end up in the hands of Richard Mundi, a shady Manhattan real-estate developer. DiNoto has hard cases shaking every tree, and Mundi, whose business is tanking, knows that he’ll be found out, but he’s more concerned about his beautiful, willful daughter’s relationship with a self-styled revolutionary who is really an FBI snitch. Mundi hires a tough-but-not-so-bright PI to follow his daughter, as well as to become a patsy to hand to DiNoto, if necessary. Soon, half a dozen people are scheming to obtain the heroin. All have larceny in their hearts but lack the criminal savvy to pull it off. Gibson’s elliptical, ever-evolving plot seems a marriage of Raymond Chandler complexity and Donald E. Westlake comic haplessness, but he imbues his characters with a kind of desperate humanity that is brilliantly played out when Manhattan goes dark in the famous 1967 blackout. The sense of time and place is wonderfully evocative, and The Old Turk’s Load will be a signal pleasure for crime-fiction aficionados. --Thomas Gaughan