Description
“Sterling follow-up to 2010's Rogue Island.... brilliantly limned supporting characters.” ― Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “The epic, warts-and-all portrait of the city is scathing; ulcer-ridden wiseacre Mulligan ... is never less than compelling company; and the analogies between the newspaper business and the porn business are spot-on.” ― Kirkus Reviews Bruce DeSilva's crime fiction has won the Edgar and Macavity Awards; has been listed as a finalist for the Shamus, Anthony, and Barry Awards; and has been published in ten foreign languages. His short stories have appeared in Akashic Press's award-winning noir anthologies. He has reviewed books for The New York Times Sunday Book Review and Publishers Weekly , and his reviews for The Associated Press have appeared in hundreds of other publications. Previously, he was a journalist for forty years, most recently as writing coach world-wide for The Associated Press, editing stories that won nearly every major journalism prize including the Pulitzer. He has worked as a consultant for fifty newspapers, taught at the University of Michigan and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and lectured at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation. He and his wife, the poet Patricia Smith, live in New Jersey with two enormous dogs named Brady and Rondo. He is the author of Rogue Island, Cliff Walk and Providence Rag.
Features & Highlights
- Cliff Walk
- is at once a hard-boiled mystery and an exploration of sex and religion in the age of pornography.
- Written with the unique and powerful voice that won DeSilva an Edgar Award for Best First Novel,
- Cliff Walk
- lifts Mulligan into the pantheon of great suspense heroes and is a giant leap for the career of Bruce DeSilva. Prostitution has been legal in Rhode Island for more than a decade; Liam Mulligan, an old-school investigative reporter at dying Providence newspaper, suspects the governor has been taking payoffs to keep it that way. But this isn't the only story making headlines…a child's severed arm is discovered in a pile of garbage at a pig farm. Then the body of an internet pornographer is found sprawled on the rocks at the base of Newport's famous Cliff Walk. At first, the killings seem random, but as Mulligan keeps digging into the state's thriving sex business, strange connections emerge. Promised free sex with hookers if he minds his own business―and a beating if he doesn't―Mulligan enlists Thanks-Dad, the newspaper publisher's son, and Attila the Nun, the state's colorful Attorney General, in his quest for the truth. What Mulligan learns will lead him to question his beliefs about sexual morality, shake his tenuous religious faith, and leave him wondering who his real friends are.
